Defamation Bill

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes the point that the Bill takes away the presumption in favour of juries, which is fair enough. I would put that presumption back. I would trust juries to make the decision, because they are better at doing so than judges, and because a jury decision is more just. The presumption in favour of a jury is less likely to leave one under the hammer of the establishment if one falls on the wrong side of it. It is true that establishment views are sometimes hard to break through, and judges are establishment creatures, so I would always trust juries against judges.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling argument for retaining the presumption in favour of a jury trial for libel. Will he go further and support the re-establishment of juries in the criminal proceedings at which the previous Government chipped away, and in the broad range of civil matters in which jury trial is no longer available?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am in absolute agreement with my hon. Friend. Those who attack juries often take a grand view of people in public life. They think that people who are in office of some kind, or who have a seal from the Crown, are grand fellows who know everything. I think we should trust the people—a sound Conservative party slogan from the 1930s. When brought together randomly, the people make better decisions—after all, they sent hon. Members here—than the most learned judges in the land.

Any attack on juries is a part of the continual chipping away at one of the great protectors of our ancient liberties. We might believe that this attack does not matter because all our liberties are not under attack nowadays, but our liberties are always under attack. It is in the nature of Governments and judges to get more power for themselves and to suck it out from the people to whom it rightly belongs. Members of the House, representing the Commons of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—although in this instance, we are discussing only English and Welsh law—should always be on the lookout for any attack on the rights of the people.

The cost of jury trials, which was mentioned, is part of the mishmash of saying such trials are less convenient. If jury trials are expensive, we should ask: “Is justice worth paying for, or should we penny-pinch?” Of all the things the state pays for, law and order, defence of the realm and justice are the three bulwarks on which our rights depend.

I want to criticise a couple of little points in the Bill—they are less important than the jury system, but few things are as important—the first of which is the protection of academics unless they are malicious. When one of my hon. Friends said earlier that academics are not malicious, I laughed inwardly, because academics have a reputation for having some of the most spiteful battles of any profession in history when they disagree. We should be careful in saying that academics are frightfully lovey-dovey—even people in the acting community are probably quite tough with one another behind the scenes. We should not make the assumption that academics should be protected against the requirement to tell the truth just because they are academics. If what a person says is wrong, and if it defames somebody and damages their livelihood, whether they are a regius professor or a tabloid journalist ought not to make any difference.

Another thing I would like to keep—I will be accused of being old fashioned for this—is the Slander of Women Act 1891, which protects the reputation of ladies. I cannot see any reason for getting rid of it. It is rather a shame to make our law so dry and drab that we have no elegant ornaments on it to protect the reputations of those who deserve a higher degree of protection than we gentlemen.

Ultimately, there is a battle between defamation and free speech. Our newspapers, much maligned though they have been in recent months, and possibly over the last couple of years, are the most fabulous protector of our freedoms and liberties because they are so rude—because they do spy on politicians; because they do publish stories that we do not like. They embarrass us; they make us look foolish—sometimes even corrupt. That embarrassment and shame have made British public life the most honest of any country in the world. We should always protect that freedom of speech from the forces of law or the forces of Leveson—it does not really matter which: freedom of speech is very precious. But if newspapers misuse that freedom of speech, let them be punished in the defamation courts. Let them be fined and have a penalty to pay, along with the costs of a jury, because that is what has given us such a good and well balanced system—a system that ensures our liberties, but compensates those who are defamed.

Data Protection in the Areas of Police and Criminal Justice (EU Directive)

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

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

A number of Members have commented on the process, and it will be appropriate for the Minister to respond to them. I suspect that I am not in agreement on European issues with most of those who have spoken so far, but we can agree that European issues need to be discussed in more depth. In my view, if we had that in-depth debate, some people would reach different conclusions on European matters than they do now.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the draft directive. I want to highlight the fact that this is about the processing of personal data for the purposes of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution. I emphasise “investigation” because much of the focus has been on criminals, as has been the case with the Mail Online, but many of the people we are dealing with and much of the data being exchanged are relevant to investigations. People who are being investigated may not, of course, be criminals at all.

The Commission highlights the fact that new technologies require a refresh of some of the standards that are in place. We are also debating communications and how we are going to address the new technologies. The Commission is seeking to achieve greater efficiencies in law enforcement co-operation. We have heard a lot tonight about the cost of this particular proposal, but we have heard a lot less about the cost of trying to negotiate this 27 times over in the European Union. We should bear that in mind, too.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said—I am not sure whether it was in a speech or an intervention—that this is all very complicated, but I do not think it is. The directive’s content is quite straightforward. It deals with the principles governing personal data processing and the rights of individuals to access their personal data, to rectify or erase them. It talks about obligations on data controllers and data processors and so forth. All that is fairly straightforward.

It is interesting to note that the Mail Online is running a campaign on issues to do with the communications database, which I welcome. It talks about standards and who can have access to and control data, yet for this particular proposal, which in many respects is about the same issue of maintaining standards, it has adopted a different position.

This is about cross-border co-operation on crime. I look forward to the debate that we will have—in fact, it may be a debate times 130—about the different proposals that we as a nation may wish to opt in or out of at some point before the end of 2014. I expect us to debate whether measures such as the European arrest warrant, which I accept could be improved on, are helping to bring to justice rapists, murderers and paedophiles. That is what they are there for and what the police believe they are being effective in doing, and that is what we will debate in the Chamber many times over the next couple of years.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

So many instruments in the security and home affairs field are being either repealed or amended that it may not be open to us to make the decision about large numbers in 2014, because we will no longer have any ability to make a choice as a nation other than through a referendum on our membership of the European Union.

[Tom Brake]

I note what the hon. Gentleman has said. I certainly think that we need to embark on the debate on these measures sooner rather than later because of the potential for Parliament to grind to a halt, which I hope all Members agree would not be in its interests.

The Minister touched on the issue of the directive being a Schengen-building measure. I ask him to reassure me that that is absolutely certain, because I think that there is some uncertainty. I am glad that the Government intend to make it clear that there should be no attempt to impose standards in relation to internal processing.

It has been alleged that the directive might allow criminals to gain access to, or indeed delete, information about themselves. Article 12 of the draft directive states that the right to know the purpose of processing and to whom personal data have been sent can be refused by the police on the grounds that it would obstruct

“official or legal inquiries, investigations or procedures”.

The directive has clearly taken on board the concerns expressed by some Members and parts of the press.

The Government have rightly highlighted concerns about the requirement to act immediately on data security breaches, and I expect them to seek to negotiate on that in the discussions that will take place.

I welcome the position adopted by the Government. I am sure that this is just one of very many similar debates that we shall have over the next 12 or 18 months, which I think will give us an opportunity to highlight many of the positive proposals that have been implemented at EU level to ensure that the police and the judicial system become more effective.

Police

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ruffley]

I do not agree with the rather heroic numbers that the right hon. Gentleman gives for falls in crime, and I would not necessarily attribute that to brilliant Government policy. I would attribute it to hard work by police officers on the ground. He claims too much for himself, but that is not untypical of Labour politicians.

Funding was made available in the spending review to help police authorities deliver a council tax freeze in 2011-12. Should every authority participate in the freeze, it is estimated that they will receive a total of around £75 million in each of the next four years to compensate for the income that they would otherwise have raised from council tax increases, and funding for this is pencilled into the settlement.

Before moving on from the national police totals, I want to touch briefly on the claim made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that this is a 20% cut—she is obviously trying to get the soundbite off the runway. I think that she was referring to the published grant totals, but were she to look at total police spending and not just the grant figures, which means putting council tax into the equation and taking into account the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assumptions on forecast levels, she would see that the total police budget will clearly reduce spending by the end of this Parliament not by 20%, but by 14%, which is much nearer the 12% figure she coughed up for Labour’s plans. Therefore, we are not too far apart if we look at everything, rather than just the bits of the financial equation she was inducing us to look at. She gave us only half the picture.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

My hon. Friend, in making his case, properly draws attention to the 14% real-terms cut, but does he recognise that, because of the pay freeze and reforms to police terms and conditions, the actual cut to policing services will be significantly less?

[Mr Ruffley]

I certainly do. My right hon. Friend the Policing Minister gave a tour de force earlier when he explained in detail exactly how we might achieve more for just a little less spending. I reinforce the fact that between 2000 and 2008 there were heroic real-terms increases, and they have not gone away. We are not wiping away from the baseline the very high totals that were accrued, sadly, on the back of money that we subsequently discovered the country did not really have. Nevertheless, this is by no means some hacking-off-of-limbs strategy, and I think that it does a disservice to a grown-up debate to suggest that it is a bleeding-stump strategy.

I would like to say something about my local police force in Suffolk. Suffolk has the second lowest cost per head for policing out of the 43 forces in this country. It has an historically low crime rate, because by and large we are a very civilised and well-behaved county, which is why I am particularly proud to represent a Suffolk constituency. I acknowledge that the chief constable, Simon Ash, with whom I have a fruitful and friendly dialogue, is concerned about the effect that the spending constraints we are considering will have on his force. I do not agree with him, but it might be useful to remind ourselves of the composition of police spending in Suffolk.

The general grant from the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government to Suffolk for 2011-12 was £76.9 million. Specific grants added to that were £4.4 million. The council tax precept was £41.4 million, and fees and other charges were £6.4 million. That means that just over £129 million was spent in the current financial year on keeping Suffolk safe. The savings that the force has made in the past two years are quite instructive. The actual savings for 2010-11 totalled £2.6 million—consider that as a percentage of the £129 million spent overall last year—and the forecast annual savings for the current financial year are even higher, at £3.9 million. Projected savings for the four years from 2012-13 to 2015-16 are as follows: £7.3 million, £3.7 million, 2.3 million and £0.9 million.

Approximately 60% of the savings in Suffolk over the comprehensive spending review period will be achieved through collaborative working and better procurement, particularly with Norfolk constabulary. That really bears out the statements that my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister made earlier. Suffolk is finding 60% of the savings not through vicious head count cuts to uniformed officers—over half the savings are the result of smarter thinking, which I think should have been done before now. In the last Parliament the totemic collaborative project was between Essex and Kent, which was the example everyone cited, but the Norfolk and Suffolk model undoubtedly equals that, because it is delivering the savings that should have been delivered many years ago.

What about the number of uniformed officers? This is extremely politically sensitive—some might even say toxic—and much has been made of it by Opposition Members and Front Benchers. To provide some perspective, in my police authority area the number of full-time equivalent uniformed officers, as at 31 March 2009, was 1,291. At March 2010 it was 1,246 officers, and in March 2011 it was 1,241. The next set of figures is quite instructive. The chief constable argues that by 31 March 2015, if the one-year council tax freeze grant is accepted from April this year, the number of uniformed officers will be 1,189. Even if the council tax freeze grant is accepted, he predicts a reduction from 1,241 to 1,189. He says that if a council tax increase is approved from April 2012, the reduction would be fewer than 10 officers. If we go the council tax increase route, the number will fall from 1,241 to 1,232. He is arguing, as he has said in the regional press, that there will be a reduction in the number of police officers in Suffolk.

The figures are not hugely welcome from my point of view, because I believe neither that we should increase council tax in Suffolk, nor that the chief constable needs to reduce the number of officers by the magnitude he suggests, and he argues that officers will have to be lost whichever route is taken. I firmly believe, and agree with the Government, that visible policing is not a direct function of the numbers alone. There is not a positive correlation of one between the number of officers and excellent policing.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was perfectly right to say that we needed 16,000 officers on the streets when the London riots were at their zenith, but those were, by and large, extraordinary events. We certainly did not necessarily need more police officers in order to get 16,000 on the streets. Many of us thought that rather bad management by the then leadership of the Met meant that it took three days or so to get 16,000 uniformed officers on the street. They existed, as we have more than 140,000 uniformed officers in Great Britain, so getting 16,000 Met officers on the street was not purely a numbers game; they were there already.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ruffley]

I am confident—it is my hope and, indeed, expectation—that with one person we will engender a greater and sharper sense of focus and accountability, which we lack under the current regime of 17-person police authorities.

[Mark Reckless]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that in a unanimous report the Home Affairs Committee came to the same conclusion, supported I believe by its five Labour members, that a single elected individual, instead of a diffuse police authority, will increase the focus on finding savings and is likely to drive out costs in policing?

[Mr Ruffley]

Yes, and to those who say that a single individual will not necessarily have the skills to provide leadership and to be a good manager and forensic accountant, the straightforward rebuttal is that one would expect someone who was going to be up for re-election after four years to have their mind focused on what the electorate wanted and to bring in people who could help with that work. At the end of the day, the mandate given to an individual, and the knowledge that they are accountable to the people, should certainly focus the mind—not the minds of 17 people in a diffuse police authority, but the mind of one individual, who will certainly be accountable as police authorities are not so accountable at the moment.

On the ways in which a smaller number—not a hugely smaller number—of officers can deliver more police hours, I must say that they will be required to spend less time during the average shift in a police station and more time visibly on the streets. I have said that reducing bureaucracy is one way in which we can square that circle, but the Government’s future work, which I know my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister is driving forward personally, involves a streamlined crime recording procedure. The previous Government undertook such work, to which I shall be generous and pay tribute.

The four-force pilot involving Leicestershire, West Midlands, Shropshire and Surrey created a more streamlined and time-efficient way of recording incidents, with police officers given the discretion, over a certain range of offences, to write shorter reports. I should like to see that regime become absolutely standard throughout the 43 forces, so it would be useful to hear how many have adopted it.

There is more to be done on rolling back statutory charging. It is ridiculous that for quite a slew of offences a charging sergeant has to ring up the Crown Prosecution Service to get permission on some triable-either-way offences. It is fair to say that—

Policing

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

There is still a debate; it is still happening, but it will be in Committee. I am most grateful.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Before the Chair of the Select Committee moves on from the protocol, I would like to put on the record my thanks to the Government and the Treasury; I apologise, but I do not know the constituency of whoever makes these decisions. The protocol is an excellent document that will be very powerful, and it is important that there be an opportunity for Members of Parliament, as well as members of the Association of Chief Police Officers and representatives of police authorities, to have their say. I very much look forward to that debate and would like to put on the record my thanks for it happening.

[Keith Vaz]

The debate is taking place in no small measure because of all the work that the hon. Gentleman has done.

I turn to the issue of police morale, which was raised in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). For police officers up and down the country, the role and future of the police service have been at the forefront of the national agenda since July 2010. The service will suffer more than 16,000 job losses before the next election, and uncertainty remains over how pay and conditions will be affected by the Winsor review and the ruling this week by the Police Arbitration Tribunal. In addition, there is the two-year public sector pay freeze and the capped 1% increase beyond those two years. We have heard from the Police Federation that the proposals for changes to police pay and conditions will have a detrimental effect on the morale of the police service.

In a Police Federation survey of 43,000 police officers last year, 98% said that they were demoralised by how these matters were progressing. When the issue of police pay has been settled, and when that is coupled with all the other challenges that they face, there could be a fundamental shift in the standards and motivation of police officers all over the country. We would be grateful to hear from the Minister about the progress on that subject, and about any other discussions that he has had with the Police Federation.

I have to say to the Minister—again, this is uncharacteristic of him—that I was very disappointed with the reply that he gave to my parliamentary question when I asked how many times he had met the Police Federation. He gave me no reply. He said that he could not tell me how many times because that is what the previous Government did. That is very odd. I thought that this Government were committed to transparency. When the Chairman of a Select Committee tables a parliamentary question to the Minister of Policing asking when he met officially—not socially or informally—the chairman of the Police Federation, he deserves a reply. I shall take that up with Mr Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Brady. I welcome the opportunity to debate the “New Landscape of Policing” report produced by the Home Affairs Committee and the Government’s response to it. I welcome, too, the fact that many of the Committee’s members are here today.

I begin by saying, very much in the way that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), started his contribution, that there is a very busy picture when it comes to policing matters. As he stated, the NPIA will wind down by the end of this year, and SOCA will take on some of its responsibilities before being wound down. We expect the National Crime Agency to be fully functional by the end of next year. The elected police and crime commissioners should be in post by November, and the police authorities are being wound down at the same time. The protocol has recently been published. There is a shadow strategic policing requirement and an organised crime co-ordination centre.

They are just some of the things that have been established or are in the process of being wound down. At the same time, it is clear that the UK remains under threat, as it has been for many years. We have had other threats or incidents—the riots in August have been mentioned—and the diamond jubilee and the Olympics are upcoming. The changes present a complex picture of what the policing landscape will look like in a couple of years’ time, against a backdrop of a high level of threat to the UK.

The Home Affairs Committee has an important responsibility to scrutinise all those activities, and it has shown itself perfectly capable of doing so. The Minister with responsibility for policing will no doubt be personally responsible if any of those bodies fail to act in the way that they should, but it is clearly not possible for him to have a day-to-day handle on the progress that is being made across all those different areas of policing activity. Who, therefore, is actually responsible for having oversight on a day-to-day basis of all those different activities to ensure that one is not having a knock-on effect, or an unintended consequence, somewhere else?

As the Home Affairs Committee report highlights—this is reported in the Government’s response—those changes, even when complete, will not be set in stone. For instance, the point about the protocol in paragraph 38 in the Government’s response, Command Paper 8223, is likely to change once the police and crime commissioners are in post, because they may seek to make sensible changes. There is also the issue of what will happen to counter-terrorism. I certainly support what the Committee has said: it would be wrong to make changes to where counter-terrorism sits at present, but, post-Olympics, there is a strong case for including it in the National Crime Agency, given that it affects all parts of the United Kingdom. It is, therefore, a moving picture in more respects than one. I am sure that the Minister will want to continue to ensure that these matters are reported to Parliament on a regular basis so that, almost month-by-month, we can see the progress that is being made on all these different restructuring activities.

I raised the issue of the scrutiny of police and crime commissioners by the police and crime panels and the Government at Home Office questions on 12 December. I wanted reassurance that the budgets for the police and crime panels would be sufficient to allow them to scrutinise the police and crime commissioners in the way that was intended. The Government have said that £40,000 is set aside for that. In his response, the Minister may be able to set out how that figure was derived. On the face of it, £40,000 for a panel to scrutinise the activities of the police and crime commissioner does not sound like a lot of money, certainly not in comparison with the budgets of the police authorities, although they have other responsibilities that the police and crime commissioner will take on.

[Mark Reckless]

With the exception of two individuals, the police and crime panels will assist elected councillors who already receive allowances and may lean on other support from their constituent councils. Surely, at least part of the process must be to provide funds to allow appropriate scrutiny, rather than putting in great dollops of additional money.

[Tom Brake]

Councils may make a contribution in that respect, but at some point a police and crime panel might need to call on expertise that is not available in local authorities. If people are trying to access such expertise, which may be required for the panel effectively to undertake its scrutiny role, it does not take too long for a substantial bill to build up. I hope that the Minister will set out precisely how it will work and will reassure hon. Members that resources will be sufficient for the important task that the panels will undertake.

I hope that the Government will quickly review their role in scrutinising the police and crime commissioners, or at least the way in which they have been implemented. Given that activity is already starting in relation to London, it is not unreasonable to hope that by sometime in 2014, say, when the police and crime commissioners have been active for a couple of years, the Government may want to consider whether those bodies are delivering the sorts of things that we expect them to, in terms of increased accountability, greater involvement of the public and ensuring that the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable are engaging effectively with the people who are, at the moment, excluded from that consultation and engagement process.

I am sure that many hon. Members—possibly all hon. Members here—will at some point have attended the ward panel in one of the wards in their constituencies. I have done so occasionally in Wallington, South. It is clear that those panels receive useful input from key individuals in the community. It is true to say that young people are rarely present on those panels, and I suspect that those on lower incomes are underrepresented. The Government will want to consider whether police and crime commissioners and chief constables are beginning to engage more effectively with such groups to see whether their views, concerns and priorities, from a policing perspective, are properly taken on board.

The Home Affairs Committee report and the Government response contain a large body of information about the professional body. I support that and want it rolled out quickly and, as the Committee has suggested, in an all-encompassing way that is not exclusive in terms of its membership. That body should be doing some things at an early stage, including considering national minimum recruitment standards for the police force, considering whether there is scope for learning from the Teach First scheme, to see whether there are ways to get a different group of young, qualified people into the police force, and looking at whether there is any prospect of using some of the expertise that has been built up in respect of teaching schools to see whether there is any role for some of our larger police stations in that respect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I declare two interests: first, my son is the chief executive of the North Wales police authority—something that I declare when we discuss policing in the Select Committee on Home Affairs—and, secondly, that I have announced my intention to seek nomination as the Labour and Co-operative candidate to be the police commissioner for South Wales, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), mentioned.

My decision to stand for office was made not out of admiration for the frenetic pace of change since the general election, but out of enthusiasm for protecting the best features of police work and continuing the drive to cut crime and reduce reoffending. That enthusiasm is for the whole of England and Wales, which is why I particularly enjoy my work on the Home Affairs Committee, but it relates particularly to south Wales, which has experienced considerable success in recent years in reducing crime. I want that process to accelerate, rather than flag—a point that I will return to in a few minutes.

I do not want to repeat what is in the Select Committee report, and I certainly cannot deal with all the issues that it raises, which are reflected in the list of Government initiatives to which the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) referred. I want to reflect primarily on the nature of policing and the Government’s role.

Reorganisation is sometimes inevitable, but it almost always leads to a drop in performance and effectiveness in the short term, so the advice to anyone considering it is to lie down in a dark room and reflect on whether the proposed reorganisation is really necessary. The drop in performance often happens even if the ground is well prepared and the objectives clear. A problem now is that the objectives and the eventual landscape are not altogether clear and the ground has not been properly prepared everywhere.

I give the Minister credit, because he is genuinely committed to his role and wants to make improvements. I think that we would agree on many points of principle about the purpose of policing and the Government’s role. At a time of front-ended cuts to the police coming too fast and too deep, the challenge is compounded by the enormous scope of the reorganisation of central functions in which the end pattern of organisations and responsibilities is not yet clear. That is a serious drawback. The map has not yet been accurately drawn. It looks like one from the middle ages in which certain parts of the landscape are just marked by the words, “Here be dragons”, without giving full details of what is happening in those territories. That is a pity, because some changes might prove to be beneficial in the long term, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East said. If there is no certainly or clarity, the short-term drop in performance might be significant.

As the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, we need more transparency and more clarity about the evidence on which the approaches are based. I agree with him on the need to ensure that new systems connect with local authorities. For example, when we took evidence in Wales, we saw the benefits of the Welsh Government making a joint appointment with the Youth Justice Board to ensure proper understanding of national priorities and how they link to the work of local government and youth offending teams in Wales. That is important, because the reorganisation of national organisations is not the only challenge facing the police.

The challenges range from international terrorism, organised crime—it seems to get more business-like by the day and sometimes looks as though it benefits from university-level business studies more than perhaps some businesses do—and the significant use of the internet for criminal activity, across to the riots in August 2011 and the ever-present problems of daily and weekly local crime and disorder. I will touch on those logistical challenges for the police and others in a moment.

In evidence to the Select Committee, the Minister stressed the importance of the Peelian principles. Sir Robert Peel underlined two principles particularly when he established the first police force: first, that the first responsibility of the police is to reduce crime and offending, which the Minister quoted in evidence to the Select Committee; and, secondly, the rather delphic utterance:

“The police are the public and the public are the police”.

To unpack that, it means that there must be confidence on both sides of the equation—there must be trust and an understanding of the roles of the community and the police. Of course, Sir Robert Peel laid down other issues on integrity, trust and how policing is done, which is all very important, but we must stress the practical implications of putting the first priority of the police at the forefront of all our discussions and debates.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gave clear focus to the creation of local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. That legislation has been enormously successful, as the Minister has been kind enough to acknowledge. Since then, the partnership work between the police and local authorities has been more integrated into the local and wider scheme of partnership working. In general, that is a good thing, but there is always a danger that the specific focus on crime reduction could be eroded, and we must be careful in future to ensure that that is not the case.

I underline the lessons to be drawn from violence reduction in Cardiff. I apologise to members of the Select Committee who have heard me expand on that topic more than once in the past, but it is a significant demonstration of what can be achieved. With a clear focus on the nature of violent incidents—what provoked them, where they happened and what could be done to prevent them—violence in Cardiff has reduced by roughly 25% ahead of the reductions in equivalent cities in England and elsewhere. Not only is that measurement based on police figures, but it has been tested in a peer-reviewed article in the British Medical Journal based on evidence of the number of people who go to accident and emergency units requiring treatment, and it therefore has real validity.

The figures show a significantly reduced number of victims, and Victim Support has stated on more than one occasion that more than anything else, victims want to know that they will not become a victim again—it is not retribution that they seek, but confidence and security in the community. The reduction in offences is enormously important from that point of view. It reduces the waste of police time. That is significant because police can attend to other things: reassuring the public and investigating crime. It also reduces the burden on the NHS. Putting people’s faces together after a serious attack is significant and expensive for the NHS, as has been commented on by Professor Jon Shepherd, who has led the work. We have seen that success.

I feel safe in the centre of Cardiff, because I know the figures show that it is a relatively safe place. However, it is significant that evidence from some programmes undertaken by John Humphrys two years ago demonstrated that a lot of people find that the activity and feeling on the streets—the discourtesies, such as the noise and the ebullience—make them feel less safe. People’s behaviour is not based just on the facts of crime; they also react to their environment. We need to focus on the accurate measurement of crime and its reduction to ensure that people are safer, but we also need a greater focus on enabling the public to know the facts and to feel safe, if they are, and to know that any remaining problems are being addressed.

In a leader column last week, The Guardian expressed worry that the election of police and crime commissioners would turn into a rat-catcher’s election. I am not entirely sure what was in the mind of the writer. I think that they feared that we would go to the lowest common denominator in debating policing and crime and populist sloganising in the approach to the elections. I assume that they did not want to imply that a police commissioner would be unpaid and, therefore, take revenge along the lines of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, by leading all the children of the police force area into the river.

[Mark Reckless]

The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that Peel’s principle was that the police should be the public and the public should be the police. Is the problem not that the two have become disengaged? What will change under the new landscape is that, through the process of election, a police and crime commissioner will be able to bring them back together.

[Alun Michael]

One approaches this either with pessimism or optimism. I admire the hon. Gentleman’s optimism, as I do often in our discussions in Committee. I hope that proves to be the case. I was reflecting The Guardian article’s fear of populist sloganising, rather than a base of evidence. That is one reason for my decision to stand, and why all parties interested in the matter need to ensure, given that the legislation has gone through and that we will have police and crime commissioners, that they are people who can add value to the process and address the public’s experience. I hope very much—perhaps we all need to contribute—that the outcome desired by the hon. Gentleman will be the one that we see.

The same leader referred to me as more of a builder of partnerships and consensus than a rat-catcher. I think that I take that as a compliment, because it goes back to Peel’s principles of trying to build consensus, reflect the public will and ensure that crime is reduced.

It is of course important that the police and crime commissioner should hold the chief constable to account. There is the responsibility of appointing the chief constable; there is the responsibility of deciding the budget and the policing plan. All those things are vital and need clear leadership. The commissioner will also need to take a lead in connecting and reconnecting the police and the public, as well as the police and the local authorities and other organisations. One of the biggest lessons that came out of the report of the Select Committee on Justice, “Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment”, was that most things that affect offending are not only outside the aegis of the police, but outside the criminal justice system. Therefore, connecting that, looking for evidence of the real problems experienced by the public and ensuring they are addressed through a partnership approach, must be an absolute priority for the commissioner, as well as for the chief constable and those who lead policing locally and lead local authorities.

Some of the costs of policing cannot be avoided, even if it is possible to reduce crime locally. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and Chief Constable Peter Vaughan of South Wales police. I stress that that meeting took place long before I decided to stand as commissioner. When we met the Minister, we focused on the capital city challenge that the south Wales police force faces, as well as policing the two great cities of Swansea and Cardiff. It also faces the challenges of a top-slice to its finances, to assist other police forces in Wales. The Minister listened carefully and promised to take away the points that we made. I hope that that will be reflected at some point in a reconsideration of the police funding formula.

I was on the streets of Cardiff when we had a visit from the English Defence League, a much larger demonstration and march by Unite Against Fascism and an element of conflict, with some people wanting to turn it into a pitched battle, which good policing prevented. That took place on the same day as South Africa was playing Wales at rugby at the Millennium stadium, the West Indies were playing England—and Wales, if I can put it in those terms—in the SWALEC stadium, and the Stereophonics were in concert in the city. That was an enormous addition to the normal day-to-day work of policing. Both Cardiff and Swansea are doing well at sport and seeking to grow and expand as cities. Given that set of capital-city challenges, a formula that gives Cardiff and therefore the South Wales police rough equivalence to the policing of similar-sized cities that do not have those capital-city responsibilities places an additional burden. I ask the Minister to continue to reflect on that and find out whether he can develop the formula to help meet that challenge.

The police have to plan in the light of the riots that took place in a number of cities, including a number of parts of London, last August. The Select Committee produced a good report, which I hope will inform Government policy and assist the police in planning and responding to such matters, but I still have a concern. Although our approach is evidence-based, we still do not have the sort of in-depth report that Lord Denning produced in response to riots in the 1980s. That report was enormously important and influential. [Hon. Members: “Lord Scarman.”] I apologise. I am sure that I am referring to two equally distinguished Law Lords. It was Lord Scarman’s report, and I am grateful for that correction.

It is important to note a lesson coming out of the riots. There was an initial concern that social networks might have played a part in accelerating the activity and some of the damage. The question was asked whether something should be done to control or even close down the social networks for a period. That was answered by chief constables who appeared before us, including the chief constable of Manchester. They thought about it for about two minutes and then realised that what they had to do was engage and not try to control. There was very intelligent use of networks by some forces, again particularly in Manchester. Networks were used to warn that, if there were riots in certain places, the police would be there to deal with them, and to encourage people not to be on the streets where there were clear dangers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Brady. Right hon. and hon. Members have already stated that policing and police organisation is a complex issue. In essence, however, I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), because the issue boils down to some simple truths, as is reflected in the contributions that have been made. Quite simply, how do we reduce crime and the fear of crime in an efficient and effective way that is accountable to the Peelian principle, already mentioned, that the public are the police and the police are the public? How do we ensure that those who work in that service on our behalf are treated fairly and with respect? I would like to explore those issues as they relate to the helpful report by the Committee and its Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

First, however, I pay tribute to the work that our police officers, and the civilian staff who support them, do daily to tackle crime and keep our communities safe. The public value that work highly and want a continued, visible policing presence. How we ensure that and manage the landscape in which police forces work is an important issue. As the hon. Member for Cambridge said, the public are not concerned about the organisation, the machinations involved or even, on occasion, accountability. They are concerned about outcomes. The Committee’s report is an extremely thoughtful and comprehensive look at the new landscape of policing, and it raises important issues for our consideration.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Betts. It is a pleasure to have you join us at the end of a fruitful discussion, and I hope that the Minister and I will summarise the debate in a way that gives you a feeling for it.

The Committee, under the able chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, hunts in a pack; I know that from personal experience. It makes a great impact, and its ideas and suggestions are well considered and thought through. The report highlights a number of questions, some of which have effectively been answered by the passing of time since the report and the Government response were compiled. There are, however, still some important issues for consideration.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the phasing out of the National Policing Improvement Agency, and the impact and timing of that. Together with other members of the Committee, he looked at the position of post-Olympics counter-terrorism and the National Crime Agency, and he urged the Government to appoint the head of the National Crime Agency. The former chief constable of Warwickshire, Keith Bristow, has now taken that post. My right hon. Friend also raised the issue of the professional body for policing proposed by Peter Neyroud in his report, and we must discuss and flesh out some of those issues.

The importance of collaboration was also raised. The previous Government focused on that issue, and tried to allow police forces to obtain clear financial and operational benefits from collaboration. The Committee looked at IT, and I will return to that issue. The IT systems are not fit for purpose, and having 43 forces use different forms of IT is not a productive use of public money. That, too, is an issue that we need to address. The Winsor review of pay and conditions—a live issue even this week—is another subject to which I will return. There is also the work on bureaucracy undertaken by Jan Berry; that work is reflected on in the Committee’s report. There are many issues to consider, and we have already heard useful contributions to the debate.

I say with genuine regret that the pace of change, and the Minister’s drive and vision, which I accept is a genuine vision, still leaves the policing landscape muddled. That has impacted dramatically on the morale of police and police officers, which I believe is at an all-time low—my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) touched on that issue. Police officers to whom I speak are not opposed to reform and recognise that changes need to be made. They object, however, to the manner in which the Government have gone about the work, and officers seem to have a feeling of conflict, rather than seeking to bring people together with the Government on some of the important changes.

When I was fortunate enough to hold the Minister’s position, some of the issues that I tried to drive through were similar to those that he is trying to drive through. In the Home Office, there were issues around efficiency, procurement and ways to improve pay, conditions and morale, which were—and are—important. However, I think that the handling of those issues has dampened morale and led police officers to feel that the Government are not on their side when it comes to fighting crime, reassuring the public, building confidence and providing a public service. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East mentioned, that has all been done against a background—I must refer to this—of massive cuts in public spending. Those cuts are well over and above what the previous Government planned, and are being made at a speed that we did not plan. They are front-loaded, which is not what the previous Government would have done. Cuts of 20% are being made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said, that is going too far, too fast.

Before the Minister says so, I will say that when I was in his position, we identified £1 billion in savings, or 12% of the policing budget, in areas such as procurement, overtime, reorganisation, collaboration and sharing, which are important. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, under Sir Denis O’Connor, confirmed that savings of 12% were achievable, but any more would affect the front line. I fear that not only the pace of change to the landscape, but the level of funding reduction, will affect the service and add to the morale issues, which are important to the members of the Committee who are here.

[Mark Reckless]

Is not one of the issues with morale that there is confusion between the 12% cut to total budgets and the 20% cut to the central grant? The front-loading that we hear about reflects, to a significant degree, a pay freeze in the early years. Yes, we must pay our police officers well, but if police officers are on average getting more than what 80% or 90% of people in their area do, as Blair Gibbs of Policy Exchange says in work published this week, we must take that into account and get a balance. We need the sort of reward that gives police pay for the right reasons, and not just because historically the work happens to have attracted an allowance.

[Mr Hanson]

I appreciate that. I know that the hon. Gentleman took an interest in policing matters as a member of the police authority in Kent before coming to this place. I hope that he recognises that we tried to address some issues, such as pay and reward, overtime and a whole range of allowances, in the policing White Paper produced in 2009; that paper fell, due to the small event of the general election in 2010. I recognise that those issues exist and must be tackled. I simply say to him and the Minister that the pace of the changes, coupled with massive cuts in public spending generally, over and above the 12%, has added to morale difficulties and will affect the front-line policing service.

Last year, a 7.5% cut was made in the policing budget. This year, an 8.7% cut will be made if the police grant settlement is approved when it comes before the House in the next few weeks. I repeat for the benefit of the House that the HMIC figures for the future—they are not our figures—show a loss of 16,000 officers and a potential loss of 16,000 civilian police staff. That makes a difference. Greater Manchester will lose 1,592 officers over the next three years, the Metropolitan police will lose 1,907 over the next few years and the West Midlands police will lose 1,250. Even Sussex will not be protected by the Minister, who represents it; it will lose 500 officers in that period. Those are not my figures; they were produced by the HMIC independently. That must have an impact on the policing landscape. Forces operating the A19 scheme, such as mine in north Wales, could lose some of their most experienced officers, ultimately replace them with less experienced officers, and then spend money on training to improve skills.

We need to consider the Select Committee report in the light of those cuts and concerns. Crime fell year on year for 14 or 15 years, not only under the Labour Government but during the last two or three years of the Major Government, but what is the record for the Minister’s first year in charge? I say this with deep regret: in the first full year for which we have figures, crime has risen. Burglary has increased by 10%, household theft by 13%, and theft from persons by 7%. Even during the recession under the last Government, crime fell; normally, crime rises during recessions. In the policing landscape, due to confusion, change and the speed of change, funding and all the other issues that we have discussed, crime is rising. The reduction in resources is being implemented unfairly and too fast, which is causing great difficulties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

As I have said before, I might not have been in the House of Commons for as long as the right hon. Gentleman, but I have learned not to answer hypothetical questions, and I do not intend to answer that one. We expect that chief constables and police authorities, and in succession to them police and crime commissioners, will be incentivised and want to be part of this new arrangement for delivering IT, because it will ensure a better service for them. It is the right approach to securing better ICT in the future.

On the other side, we have the training and development function, and I am pleased that the Chair of the Select Committee and, I think, Members on both sides of the House have welcomed the idea of the creation of a professional body for policing. I am immensely encouraged that the approach has captured the enthusiasm of police leaders.

In answer to the question about the involvement of the Police Federation, it is true that the federation expressed concern about the Neyroud report, which we had commissioned and which first proposed a body of some kind, partly because it stated that effectively the Association of Chief Police Officers would be the body’s heart and soul—I think that that was the expression used. The federation expressed the concern, among others, that it would not, therefore, be a body for the rank and file.

[Mark Reckless]

I think the phrase was “both the heart and the head”.

[Nick Herbert]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend; that was indeed the expression.

We have made it clear that we wish to reconceive the idea of a professional body for policing and to ensure that it is inclusive. That is one of the important principles that I have set out, and I have a working party looking at how we would set up such a body. I am very pleased that in spite of the continued reservations of the Police Federation, which I acknowledge because I do not wish to mislead Members, the federation’s chairman has been attending the working party meetings. The Police Superintendents Association is also represented, as are the ACPO representatives and UNISON, and we now have representation from the police and crime commissioners’ side as well. I am also seeking some independent advice for the working party.

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the value of the advice of the Police Superintendents Association. I certainly share his view and have mentioned that the association is represented, which is important. I want to make it clear that we envisage that this will be an inclusive body. It is important that we raise our sights and consider the great advantage of the creation of a professional body that will have responsibility for standards, professional development and training. That is something that I think has been absent from the policing world. It is surprising that policing does not have such a body, which will be immensely positive.

I will explain briefly why this is so important. The development of professionalism in policing—the acquisition of the right skills—is an important part of our agenda to ensure that police officers are equipped to deal with modern challenges without the kind of bureaucratic approach that we have seen in the past. If we are to develop in policing an agenda of trusting professionals and the extension of professional discretion, we must ensure alongside that that police officers are trained, equipped and incentivised in a way that reflects the exercise of professional judgment, skills and discretion that commands public confidence and trust.

[Mark Reckless]

The Minister has said that he has secured representation from the police and crime commissioners, but I am puzzled because they will not be elected until November. In his report, Mr Neyroud suggests that there could be ministerial representation on the body in charge of the professional body, but he is not so keen on the elected commissioners, whom he wants to see on a consultative panel on the side. Has that been reviewed? Will the Minister clarify his remarks?

[Nick Herbert]

I noticed my hon. Friend’s puzzlement, so I should have offered clarification. What I meant is that Kit Malthouse, the deputy Mayor of London who has responsibility for policing in London, now attends the working party that I have set up, as does the chair of the Association of Police Authorities, Mark Burns-Williamson, who is also the chair of West Yorkshire police authority. That side of the tripartite is now represented, as are the policing professionals, which is important. Moreover, on Monday the arrangements will change so that, effectively, the first police and crime commissioner will be created in London. That is what I meant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

In law, on Monday. It is up to the Mayor whether he wishes to delegate that function. That power of delegation was, of course, established by the previous Government, so I am sure that there will be no criticism of it whatsoever. It makes sense for us to ensure that the deputy Mayor of London, as the person responsible, at present, for holding to account the country’s biggest police force and a quarter of all police officers, takes part in such discussions, because he can give voice to those who hold, and who will hold, police forces to account.

[Mark Reckless]

When I was a member of the Kent police authority, I was appointed by Medway council, which is an elected body. Surely that provides an analogy with Mr Malthouse, who has been appointed by the elected Mayor. The purpose of this reform is to increase democratic accountability. Although I welcome what is happening in London, it is different from elsewhere. I am not sure that Members are convinced by the idea that someone who is merely appointed by someone who is elected, or who is an independent member of a police authority, can somehow represent, in advance, elected commissioners. To the extent that there is to be an elective impact, whether with the protocol or other developments, that should come from hon. Members, who are elected, and we ask the Minister to consider our views, rather than look to people who are appointed by others.

[Nick Herbert]

I do not consider that to be an alternative. I pay attention to all views expressed on the issues, but I certainly have no intention of placing a Member of Parliament on a working party for the development of the professional body. The working party consists of policing professionals and representatives of policing organisations. I have sought to add, in a way that is entirely sensible, those who hold police forces to account. Of course, we will continue to discuss with the Committee and with hon. Members the development of a policing professional body, which is an entirely sensible thing.

That brings me on to the second part of my speech. The first phase of the police reform agenda was about structures and that work will continue as we set up the National Crime Agency.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is absolutely right, and that is the reassurance that people in Cornwall are looking for. Our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 80 is an attempt again to put on record the strength of feeling and the concerns that exist.

There is a wider point, which is that occasionally there are anomalies in legislation—this has applied to Governments historically—which, by their nature, will not apply to the vast majority of cases and are therefore not felt to be at the heart of what that piece of legislation is trying to do. However, as we—I hope—move as a country down the route of localism, where different authorities perhaps decide to take on different responsibilities and powers, it is important that we should have different ways of working locally and that legislation be drafted to take account of that. Perhaps that could be done through secondary legislation, to address specific examples such as Cornwall. I appreciate that there is a concern about time—the Minister will want to move towards the elections for police commissioners, and therefore the appointment of panels—but where only one or two specific areas are affected, following them up through such legislation might be a better approach. It might be too late to do that in this legislation, given how it is drafted, but the message for the Government generally is that, as we have different systems in different parts of the country, we should take the opportunity to pick that up and deal with them separately without holding back the overall thrust of legislation as it applies to the country as a whole.

I am grateful to the Minister for responding to that concern—he has corresponded with people back in Cornwall about the issue. However, I seek a reassurance from him that should the panel not to seek to co-opt, there will be a direction from the Secretary of State or some discussion with the local authorities involved to ensure that the debates that have taken place outside and inside this House—those that we have had this evening, as well as over previous months, in other stages of the Bill’s progress—are taken into account, so that people are reassured and we can proceed to a panel in which people can have every confidence.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart). I wish to speak to Lords amendments 69 and 98. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West is leaving the Chamber, but I would just like to tell him that I enjoyed his contributions in Committee, and that when I was on a Home Affairs Committee trip to Turkey, I spent several long bus journeys reading his voluminous contributions, including those on Lords amendment 68. He put the case for the panel being able to veto certain mechanisms with a two-thirds, rather than three-quarters, majority. I was persuaded by his arguments, and I welcome the fact that Ministers have now adopted those proposals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

To clarify the matter for the hon. Gentleman, the procedures do not extend to the power of the panel. If we wanted to give the panel the power of a veto, that would have to be determined by primary legislation. The matter must, therefore, be settled now. I have set out the Government’s case fully, but it seems that he disagrees with us.

[Mark Reckless]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that what he is saying would apply also to my point? Although the Localism Bill contains mechanisms for a referendum, were we to want to use that to settle a dispute between the panel and the commissioner, the provision would have to be on the face of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill or, perhaps better, the Localism Bill, for the panel rather than the Secretary of State to have that power. Without that, we are left solely with the “have regard” formulation.

[Nick Herbert]

I hope to be able to answer my hon. Friend’s question in a moment.

I had already sought to addressthe issue of the position of Cornwall as a unitary authority, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) raised very well with his amendment. I hope that my earlier comments about the power under the Bill will help to answer his concern.

Having spotted that the amendment did not allow the Secretary of State to impose unilaterally members who had not been proposed by the police and crime panel, the hon. Gentleman raised the interesting question of what would happen if the panel did not propose any co-opted members. He was right to suggest that we would not have the power of direction, but discussions would of course take place, and I have already indicated that we would be unhappy if a proposal for additional members of the Devon and Cornwall police and crime panel did not reflect geographical balance. We would certainly seek meetings with the relevant local authorities to discuss the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

As for the powers of the Secretary of State, I should point out that he or she will not decide the precept, but will decide the threshold at which a referendum should be triggered. Such a referendum would put the decision in the hands of the people, so it cannot be characterised as a centralist power or a denial of localism. My hon. Friend is a passionate localist, and he knows that I am as well. I can tell him that I am satisfied that the final say would rest with the people, and, in that sense, would be far more legitimate than a power exercised at an earlier stage in the process by the police and crime panel.

[Mark Reckless]

There are two potential issues in the Secretary of State’s involvement. One of them is to do with setting an excessive precept level in respect of the Localism Bill, and the other arises when a panel vetoes and the commissioner “has regard to” that, and the panel and the commissioner have a dispute. My concern is that unless the commissioner or panel make a decision—although I cannot see how that can happen given the reference to “have regard”—these regulations will lead to an appeal to the Secretary of State, who will then in some respect have even greater central power than under the current system.

[Nick Herbert]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s point to the extent that there are two checks in this process: the check that is provided by the police and crime panel, thereby giving a voice to local authorities in this matter, with every local authority in the policing area represented on the panel; and the check that is provided ultimately by the people, triggered by the Secretary of State suggesting that there may be an excessive precept and substituting, effectively, a democratic lock for an administrative lock. My hon. Friend is right that two procedures are riding side by side in this respect, and we have to work out how they fit together. We hope to achieve that through the regulations. We are, effectively, following the proposals on the democratic lock set out in the Localism Bill, but I repeat that I would be very happy to have a meeting with my hon. Friend to discuss how these regulations will be shaped and how we might establish procedures that are workable and that ensure policing does not grind to a halt if there is a dispute. I hope that what I have said reassures my hon. Friend in the interim, and I look forward to having those discussions with him.

I think I have now responded to all the issues raised in what has been a useful, if somewhat technical, debate.

Lords amendment 5 agreed to.

Lords amendments 7 to 42 agreed to.

Lords amendment 43 disagreed to.

Government amendments (a) and (b) made in lieu of Lords amendment 43.

Lords amendments 44 to 52, 54, 55, 58 and 60 to 97 agreed to.





Schedule 8

Appointment, Suspension and Removal of Senior Police Officers

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 98.—(Mark Tami.)

Police Detention

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his support for introducing emergency legislation, and we will, of course, discuss that as fully as possible with him and with the shadow Secretary of State, as that is the right way to proceed. The Metropolitan police has issued interim guidance on the basis of the judgment, and that is available to other forces. However, we will have further discussions with ACPO about what the appropriate guidance should be for all forces in this interim period, so that it is consistent with our and their obligation to comply with the law as now stated by the High Court. We will do everything possible to mitigate the impact of the judgment, because we want to ensure that the police are not impeded in going about their business and in dealing with criminals.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the relative roles of himself, Home Office officials and ACPO in respect of the advice just given to the House, and will he agree to publish the legal advice that has been provided—through ACPO in this instance, it appears? Will he also reflect on the development in the use of police bail over the past 25 years? Clearly, it has been accepted practice, but is there any evidence of a trend of suspects being put on police bail often for many months, or even years, when the police might instead be taking a more expeditious approach to their cases?

[Nick Herbert]

I am not aware of any such trend, nor am I aware of any concern in this House, or more widely, that gave rise to the decision. The judge’s decision in this instance was based on the narrow case that was before the court. So far as I am aware, there has not been any wider debate suggesting concern about the way police bail has been operated over the past 25 years. That is why we feel that it is appropriate to introduce emergency legislation. I doubt that it would be proper for ACPO to publish its legal advice, which it has received from two Queen’s counsels, but I can confirm that ACPO has written to the Home Secretary to confirm its view that emergency legislation is required. It has given a summary of counsels’ advice, which was given to it since 23 June, and that summary was sufficient to persuade it and us that it is necessary to move forward in the way I have suggested.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

My right hon. Friend, who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, makes a reasonable point. Of course, there would be a resources issue for HMIC that the Government would need to consider, but given the importance of the reform that the Government are seeking to introduce, and given that the police themselves say that this would be the biggest change to the policing model in this country for centuries, I suggest to my right hon. Friend that it is incumbent on us to say to HMIC that we will ensure that it has the necessary resources.

The Local Government Association—I do not know whether the Minister has a higher regard for it than for police authorities—is also totally opposed to the reform. It is difficult to find a single council that supports it. Surrey county council sometimes edges towards it, but it is difficult to find many others. I would have thought that if this were a great reform, the police would be coming forward and saying, “This will make a huge difference”, but of course they are not. The challenge, therefore, is to find the demand for the change. Local people are not demanding it, so who actually is? The Minister seems to be driven by a belief that he knows best. He accused others of being elitist, but if everybody is saying that the Government have got it wrong, there might be an element of truth in it.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman asked for an example of a council that supports the reform. My council—Medway council—of which my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) is also a member, has supported the reforms, and our council leader, Rodney Chambers, has been a strong proponent, with me, of direct election for those who oversee our police. Surely the key thing, however, is that the electorate voted for it. The Lib Dems stood on a platform of direct election for police authorities, and we stood on one of directly elected commissioners. We now have this compromise involving a panel. The APA commissioned an opinion poll that showed that most people wanted direct election for those who oversaw the police.

[Vernon Coaker]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has cleared up the issue—there is one council in favour of the proposed changed across the country. However, I disagree absolutely with what he said about the electorate voting for this measure. The model in the Bill was not voted for by the majority of people. As he said, the model in the Liberal Democrat manifesto was completely different from the one in the Bill. He gave the game away when he said, “Of course, in the coalition agreement, there was a compromise”. Well, if there was a compromise, it obviously happened after the election, not during the election, so I do not think that anybody actually voted for this model.

--- Later in debate ---

That is a fairly strong statement from the most senior police officers in this country about the lack of checks and balances, and about their concerns regarding politicisation in the Bill.

[Mark Reckless]

ACPO, the hon. Gentleman tells us, has suggested that there are issues with checks and balances in the new system, but is not the real issue in the current system, with the lack of checks and balances on both the Home Office and the chief constable, and with the weakness of the police authority leg of the tripartite process? Is it not right that we do something, such as introduce direct elections as proposed in the Bill, to bolster the power of that third, local, democratic pillar?

[Vernon Coaker]

Nobody has said that the existing system is absolutely flawless or does not need improving. I said to the hon. Member for Cambridge that it is important for police authorities to improve their visibility, but I suggest to the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood that we are discussing the Government’s proposals for the future. If ACPO tells us that the Bill’s checks and balances are simply too weak, should we not then say, “We need to look at this, think about it and try to understand what we should do to further improve the system that we want”?

The Minister gets very upset when I say this, but I am going to say it again. The police and crime panels are one way in which the police and crime commissioner is supposed to be held to account, but the panel is a completely toothless watchdog with no real power. It has two vetoes: one on appointments, as the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood knows, but only with a three-quarters majority; and the other on the precept, in respect of which the hon. Gentleman has tabled an amendment, but again with a three-quarters majority. That is it.

The Minister will say, “The panel has to be consulted, referred to and involved,” but how can it be right that there will be a police and crime commissioner, without anybody able to do anything about what he does, providing obviously that what he does is within the law?

Then we come to the huge number of representations about the size of the area that that one person will have to cover. Again, the Government do not think this is a problem. They say, “Oh, there’s no problem with this; it’s fine,” but there is no evidence to support that, and that is why the House should adopt the new clause so that we may have an inquiry and the HMIC can look into the matter.

The Welsh Local Government Association points out that the system in Wales works very well, and it does not believe that replacing between 17 and 19 members of the individual police authorities in Wales

“with a single elected commissioner will…improve public accountability of the police”.

The association does not believe that one individual can properly reflect all

“the divergent communities that exist in police force areas”,

and it cites the huge area of Dyfed Powys, where one individual will cover the whole area.

We can cite other examples. The Avon and Somerset area covers 1,855 square miles, from Thornbury to Yeovil to Minehead. It has a population of 1.6 million and large rural areas such as Exmoor, major urban areas such as Bristol and Bath and significant market towns. One individual will represent all those areas. That police authority area and one or two others that I will mention across the country all point out the difficulty, and we should listen to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

That might be a good debating point, but as a Bill goes through the House we need to debate its principles and the right legislative approach. We do not have the Queen’s counsel support that is available to the Minister, so the odd drafting error might occur, but that does not alter the thrust of what we are trying to do through the new clause. If the right hon. Gentleman had been here for the earlier debate he would know that the Minister, even with his bank of lawyers, supporters and helpers, has had to propose a number of amendments to correct drafting errors. So it is not only me who makes the odd drafting error, but I am doing it on my computer. Notwithstanding any drafting error, if we regard as right the principle that a protocol or memorandum of understanding should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure of the House, we should support it.

In its evidence and the report it issued yesterday, ACPO said that

“there are three broad areas where we believe improved safeguards are required”.

I shall deal with only the first of those three, as it relates to the new clause. ACPO said of the first area:

“Clarity on the responsibilities of the PCC”—

the police and crime commissioner—

“and Chief Constable. The proposed ‘protocol’ is still early in its development. We believe such a key document will need to be specific and legally binding—such as through a Code of Practice founded in law.”

That was ACPO’s advice yesterday. It continued, at paragraph 50:

“ACPO has real concerns that the Bill does not fully recognise the uniqueness of the tripartite system between the Home Secretary, Chief Constables and local democratic governance. It is considered that the Bill places too much emphasis on local considerations giving disproportionate power to the PCC to the detriment of the necessary national and legal responsibilities placed upon the Home Secretary and Chief Constables. Our concern is to ensure that Chief Constables have sufficient operational independence safeguarding their impartiality to balance the various duties and accountabilities they face. Currently, it is at best uncertain that the safeguards under development in parallel with the progress of the Bill will achieve that aim.”

I think ACPO is clearly telling the Minister that he needs to amend the Bill in a similar way to that suggested in my new clause.

[Mark Reckless]

The hon. Gentleman is telling us what ACPO said yesterday, but it is not easy for the Minister because ACPO has previously taken an entirely different line. Sir Hugh Orde told the Home Affairs Committee that he did not want anything entrenched in legislation.

[Vernon Coaker]

No doubt members of ACPO, including Sir Hugh Orde, its hugely respected president, will have considered the discussions on the Bill and will have continued to discuss it with colleagues in deciding on the most appropriate advice and guidance to give the Government. ACPO has regularly said that it is for the Government to determine the governance structure, but it will do its best, whatever structure is finally decided, to implement it and deliver the policing that we would all wish to see. However, it also has a responsibility to point out to the Government where there are problems, and it has done so in guidance. There is a serious need for clarity from the Government regarding the memorandum of understanding, code of practice or protocol.

It is not acceptable for this issue not to be subject to a legislative process, and I should be interested to learn whether the Minister agrees. He has agreed that there should be a protocol, and a draft is in the throes of production—no doubt, a group is working on it and discussions are under way. I suspect that there are disagreements, which is why it has not been issued yet—it is proving more problematic than the Minister expected.

We need a protocol, because we need to clarify the role of the police and crime commissioner vis-à-vis the chief constable. In Committee, we debated at length what their respective roles should be. The police and crime commissioner is elected on a local mandate and will make certain promises, but what is their mandate vis-à-vis the chief constable? Where is the line drawn between what the commissioner would wish to do and the chief constable’s operational responsibilities?

It is interesting that an amendment has been tabled by some of the Minister’s colleagues, who are as concerned as I am. Indeed, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), has added his name to amendment 149. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) is the lead Member for the amendment, and he is clearly concerned. The amendment has a great deal of merit, and it tries to deal with the issue. The hon. Gentleman is trying to clarify whether a police and crime commissioner has the opportunity to tell a chief constable to investigate a crime. Is it any crime, or no crime? Is that just a matter for the chief constable? Does the commissioner have any power over that?

What about the funding of units? Can the commissioner tell the chief constable what units they should have? On the apportioning of resources, the Minister looked very upset when I quoted the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which showed that only 5% of police and community support officers were not in the back office. What about the commissioner’s ability to say what the correct mix of staff is? They might not want to see as many people doing a particular job, and may want to civilianise. The Minister’s favourite thing at the moment is looking at outsourcing. What if a commissioner does not believe in that? Whose responsibility would it be?

What about the reorganisation of policing? Who has a say on that? What equipment can or cannot be used? It may be an operational decision to use horses or dogs in a public order situation, but does the commissioner have any jurisdiction or say in whether the police have a police or horse section? Is that an operational responsibility? If we had a draft protocol, we could begin to understand the differences in those areas.

We have just seen the police do a very good job overall at the weekend, and I praised the Metropolitan Police Commissioner for it. However, when I recently saw him we discussed containment. What right does a police and crime commissioner or someone else have to tell a chief constable that they had dealt with such a situation wrongly? Does the police and crime commissioner have the right to do more than express an opinion? Police and crime commissioners are directly elected. We are not talking about a police authority. Police and crime commissioners will not be appointed by the Mayor and unelected, as in London. Who has the responsibility for making such decisions? These are hugely serious issues that worry many people across the country.

The Minister’s response is, “It won’t be a problem. Don’t worry about it. Good sense will prevail. Why should the doomsday scenario presented by the shadow Minister happen?” That is a pretty poor way to legislate when we are dealing with such a serious matter. It is not enough to say, “Don’t worry. It won’t happen. Everybody’s good sense will prevail.” The amendments before us are important. Clearly, I am not the only one who is worried.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

That is another interesting dilemma that might arise. No doubt there are many other such examples in which we could point out the dangers.

I cannot stress enough how important the police feel this is and how important I think it is. I am sure that we will all listen to the Minister when he responds not only to the lead new clause but to the amendment tabled by his hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood.

[Mark Reckless]

I should first declare an interest as a member of the Kent police authority. I thank the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) for his testimonial to my work in that role, which—who knows?—might find its way into one of my election leaflets.

We have heard about the protocol—let us call it that, so that we use common language—and I note that the shadow Minister refers to operational responsibility in the new clause. It would be great to have a clearly agreed definition for operational independence or responsibility as it is, but it is enormously difficult to do that. ACPO’s position has changed on that, which does not necessarily assist us. The Home Affairs Committee visited ACPO two days ago, and it seems that the draft protocol is bouncing between it and the Home Office. ACPO had no objection to the draft being shared with the Committee when we asked for it. Will the Minister give the Committee sight of the protocol, even if it is still an early draft?

Amendment 149 is a probing amendment, because it is very important to get the views of the House and of the Minister on the record. I have tried to emphasise a point that arose from the 1962 royal commission, which is that there is an important distinction, as I put it in the amendment, that the elected commissioner

“shall have no involvement in decisions with respect to individual investigations and arrests.”

That is an important constitutional protection. The Minister spoke quite strongly on that both on Second Reading and in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. I am slightly concerned that one remark he made in the Committee, regarding the potential for too strict an interpretation of what Lord Denning said in 1968, should not be taken out of context. The context, as the Home Secretary said on Monday, is that we anticipate that it will be the elected commissioner who is in charge, as with the Mayor of London.

The Minister was very clear on Second Reading and when he gave evidence to the Committee on the role and importance of the elected commissioners and that what we are doing is rebalancing the tripartite system, moving from a police authority leg that has traditionally been too weak and bolstering the role of the democratic and local element with the directly elected commissioner.

I raised that point with the Minister in the Committee on 27 July last year, and asked whether there was any possibility of an incompatibility between what we intended with the legislation and what Lord Denning said in ex parte Blackburn in 1968. The Minister’s reply was important. He said:

“It is often stated, quoting Lord Denning's dictum that the police should be answerable to the law and the law alone. I think that is right in the sense of when they are exercising their powers of arrest and so on that that should not be subject to any kind of political interference. We would all agree about that but, clearly, somebody has to set the police budget and the strategic direction of the police, so there has to be accountability to someone, and our premise is that that should no longer be to the centre, to a faceless bureaucrat, to the Home Secretary; it should instead be to local people through the election of the police and crime commissioner.”

That is what we intend to achieve with the Bill, and it is a distinction that is consistent with what we saw back in the 1962 royal commission.

As the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) knows, the Select Committee received some helpful legal advice on this matter that read:

“This part of Lord Denning’s judgment is not strictly binding as it went beyond the range of issues that had to be decided in that case, and is therefore obiter.”

We then had an assessment from our legal advisers on a leading academic text in this area by Richard Clayton QC and Hugh Tomlinson QC, whose conclusion on Lord Denning’s judgment was:

“The doctrine is an exorbitant one and its legal foundations are very slight”.

I had a look at that leading text and some of the academic debate on the difficulty of defining operational independence and what it was considered to mean. Richard Clayton and Hugh Tomlinson referred to section 6(1) of the Police Act 1996, which the Bill carries over, and wrote that it

“appears to create a specific sphere of responsibility for the police authority”.

They go on to state that section 10(1), which deals with the direction and control of the chief constable, is subject to that provision, and

“only covers immediate operational direction and control but does not bear on the question of the extent to which the chief constable is under supervision of the police authority.”

The Committee went into the academic literature in more detail. We heard from Rick Muir, from the Institute for Public Policy Research, who has done much work—from the left—on this key issue. He agreed with me when I asked whether there was a distinction

“between the individual cases, where clearly the police should have independence in terms of arrest and investigation in those individual cases, and the broader spectrum of setting priorities, determining where budgets are spent and setting policy in general, which is properly the field of elected politicians”.

He observed that unfortunately confusion had arisen because wrongly there had been a

“tendency of chief constables to take Denning to mean that they are in charge of strategy”.

We do not have before us this protocol that the hon. Member for Gedling referred to, but the Committee was able to draw out some of the key issues.

My amendment emphasises the position in 1962. Unfortunately, when Denning made his judgment, he did not have the advantage of being able to refer to proceedings in the House. Judges have been able to do that only since Pepper v. Hart in, I think, 1994. The key 1962 royal commission, which set the consensus on operational independence, was summarised by the legal advisers in a report to the Committee. They wrote:

“The Royal Commission on Police emphasised the need for impartiality and operational independence of the police in relation to ‘quasi-judicial’ decisions”.

The royal commission included in those quasi-judicial decisions

“inquiries with regard to suspected offences, the arrest of persons and the decision to prosecute,”

adding:

“In matters of this kind it is clearly in the public interest that a police officer should be answerable only to his superiors in the force and, to the extent that a matter may come before them, to the courts. His impartiality would be jeopardised, and public confidence in it shaken, if in this field he were to be made the servant of too local a body.”

The commission said in respect of other duties:

“It cannot in our view be said that”

they

“require the complete immunity from external influence that is generally acknowledged to be necessary in regard to the enforcement of the law in particular cases.”

As our legal advisers point out, those other duties include

“general policies in regard to law enforcement…the disposition of his force, the concentration of his resources on any particular type of crime or area, the manner in which he handles political demonstrations or processions”

or

“his policy in enforcing the traffic laws and…dealing with parked vehicles”.

That clear distinction has therefore run all the way through, from the royal commission in 1962 to the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee has taken. That is what I am trying to emphasise with my amendment 149; indeed, it is also what the Minister emphasised when he appeared before the Committee. I would therefore be grateful if he confirmed that he does not resile from any of those remarks.

The other important point to make about Denning’s judgment in 1968 is that it related not to what a police authority could do in terms of a chief constable, but to what a single individual, Mr Blackburn, who as a publicly spirited gentleman came to court with a judicial review, could do. The question was about the extent to which he as an individual could require the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to implement policing in a particular operational manner. That distinction is made clear by further material, including the 1988 case of Hill v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, in which it was clearly drawn. In that case, Lord Templeman said:

“The question for determination in this appeal is whether an action for damages is an appropriate vehicle for investigating the efficiency of a police force.”

He concluded:

“A police force serves the public, and the elected representatives of the public must ensure that the public get the police force they deserve.”

It is clearly right that there can be no interference in individual investigations or arrests, but it is important to look at the issue from both sides.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing to the House’s attention what I think is a dilemma that the Minister has created. As I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman, I have been reflecting on what would have happened if we had had police and crime commissioners at the time of the Stephen Lawrence murder and the subsequent inquiry. Does he think that it would have been possible for the police and crime commissioner to fulfil the requirements of both clause 1(8)(g) and his amendment 149?

[Mark Reckless]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could cite that provision, which I do not have to hand.

[Steve McCabe]

I apologise. Clause 1(8)(g) places a responsibility on the police and crime commissioner to

“hold the chief constable to account”

for

“the exercise of duties relating to equality and diversity that are imposed on the chief constable by any enactment.”

In particular, I am thinking of what came out of the Lawrence inquiry.

[Mark Reckless]

Yes, absolutely. What we saw in that instance was a failure in the operational direction of the Metropolitan police. Rather than waiting years and years for an inquiry to make the Metropolitan police have appropriate respect for diversity and follow up on such crimes in the way it should, a directly elected commissioner with sufficient authority could have pressed for that much more quickly. Indeed, that is one area where we would be looking for clear, elected oversight and guidance for the police.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

On the point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) just made, I note that my hon. Friend’s amendment states that

“the police and crime commissioner shall have no involvement in decisions with respect to individual investigations”.

If there were a high-profile murder, would my hon. Friend think it appropriate for the commissioner to say to a chief constable, “I think you should put more resource into that investigation. What you are doing now is not sufficient and there is real community concern”? Or is my hon. Friend saying that that would be inappropriate?

[Mark Reckless]

That is a very good example, which helps to elucidate the point. It would not be appropriate for the elected commissioner to say, “On this particular individual investigation I would like fewer”—or more—“police”, or, “You should investigate it in this way rather than that.” We do not look to the elected commissioners to do that, but I see a strong role for them in ensuring that justice is colour blind and that the police do not make assumptions about a witness or potential suspect on the basis of ethnicity or any other inappropriate basis. We have seen strong progress by the police in that area, but, with the Macpherson inquiry and the way in which some measures have been rolled out, there has not necessarily been the sensitivity that there might have been. The elected commissioner will have a relationship with the wider electorate, however, so they will sometimes be in a position to lead the police in particular areas regarding social attitudes.

I have huge respect for the police, given my work with them in Kent, but there are particular traditions in policing and the work force are made up in a particular way. Those things have changed, with a very welcome and greater number of women now working as police officers, and there has been a significant improvement in black and minority ethnic representation. In Kent, we had the first black chief constable in Mike Fuller, who did an extraordinary job of engaging with the public and involving them closely with the work of Kent police. The police have a significantly smaller proportion of graduates, although it is higher than it was, and the elected commissioner will be able to lead in those areas. I look to him to do so.

I emphasise to the House that the distinction I draw, going back to the 1962 royal commission at least, works both ways, and I am very concerned about budget setting, priorities and some of the management of public protest. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) asked some probing questions of various witnesses, but the question of whether there should be a presumption that police officers will travel in pairs, and the extent to which officers might be on bicycles, on foot or in cars, are very properly areas for elected oversight, and inevitably political decisions. If we do draw that distinction, the Bill will help chief constables.

[Vernon Coaker]

May I be clear about what the hon. Gentleman just said? Did he say that an elected individual should be able to try to influence the chief constable in terms of patrolling in pairs, individually or whatever, and in terms of the other examples he used? Or did he say that he thought it should be open to the police and crime commissioner to direct the chief constable on those matters?

[Mark Reckless]

In almost all those areas, there will invariably be agreement. There is give and take, and that has been my experience on a police authority. I am sure that in most instances it will apply to the elected commissioner and to the chief constable. I am not convinced that “direct” is the right word, but there might be public concern, as there was a few years ago in my area, about the police spending too much time in cars and not being available on the beat. Indeed, I have often heard it said that two officers who go out on the beat together will naturally tend to talk and enter into exchanges with each other, whereas one police officer on patrol might have a greater tendency to engage with the public.

I think that we would look to elected commissioners to reflect the public view, although I would not necessarily be comfortable with that in individual instances. It would be right for the elected commissioner to say, “Previously we’ve had this presumption that officers should patrol in pairs, but I think in future the presumption should be that where possible officers patrol individually,” and I would expect the chief constable to give effect to that. However, if there were issues regarding safety, I would look to the chief constable to have those considered appropriately within the discussion.

I do not agree with the view of ACPO, nor do Conservative Members or members of the Committee necessarily accept it, that police officers operate in a sort of political vacuum where they can, without reference to the elected authority, make the decision themselves. I think that people will campaign on these issues to become the elected police and crime commissioner. In many respects, it is entirely proper that the chief constable should then implement proposals with a democratic mandate behind them, as in the case of the Metropolitan police service following what Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said about a stronger emphasis on knife crime and having more officers on public transport, particularly buses. The Metropolitan police did then implement that, and that is perfectly proper.

I should emphasise that this point goes both ways. We need to ensure that chief constables recognise the appropriate and entirely proper role of the elected commissioner in making such decisions, but there is also the other side of the coin. My experience on a police authority is that I often get asked about operational matters. A sergeant may ask me whether I thought that a particular police community support officer should be deployed from one area to another, or a constable may ask me whether I am happy about how they have dealt with a particular offence, or whether I think that a particular individual should be charged or dealt with in a certain way. It has then been incumbent on me, as a member of the police authority, to say, “Hang on a minute, this is not a proper area for an elected politician to be determining what happens within the police.” I have always been very clear about that, and when there has been an issue that is a shade of grey I have referred it to our excellent area commander in Medway, Steve Corbishley. Such sensitive issues need to be dealt with at that higher level. One cannot necessarily expect every constable, sergeant or even inspector to be totally au fait with where this line should be drawn. I am echoing the emphasis that the royal commission, and the Minister in Committee, put on this complete protection in relation to individual investigation and arrest. That is an important safeguard, and it should work both ways.

The Bill uses the phrase “have regard to” in relation to the police panel as against the commissioner for the budget, the commissioner in respect of a strategic policing objective, and the chief constable’s need to have regard to the policing plan determined by the Minister. We may be firing the starting gun for litigation, but if so, I hope that Members, particularly the Minister, have given a clear steer to the courts as to the role that we see elected commissioners having and the need to rebalance the tripartite relationship. Lord Hoffmann, in the case of Regina v. Chief Constable of Sussex ex parte International Trader’s Ferry Ltd, said that, even under the current arrangements, where regard must be had to the policing plan, the chief constable’s discretion was therefore “subject” to the statutory plan. Together with the roles of the chief constable and the Home Office, we have a rebalancing of the tripartite system. We are bolstering the democratic local element by having direct election, and that should provide a far stronger voice for the public in setting policing policy and priorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

First, I confirm again to the House something that has been confirmed on a number of occasions: the Bill does not change the legal position that the direction and control of forces remains with the chief constable. Therefore, the basis of the legal relationship between police authorities and chief constables is maintained in the direction of control in the Bill.

Nevertheless, there is concern about ensuring the fundamental principle of the operational independence of chief constables, which we debated at considerable length in Committee. As we discussed at some length, there is no statutory definition of operational independence, and indeed, there is general agreement that it would be unwise to attempt such a definition. The matter has been considered on a number of occasions by the courts—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) spoke of one key case. However, ACPO, which is concerned to ensure that the operational independence of chief officers is not in any way threatened, has said that it does not wish us to try to define it in law.

The debate on the proper role of the chief constable and the proper role of the local body that holds them to account will continue—as it does between police authorities and chief officers and others, with the matter sometimes ending up in court. That is part of what Sir Hugh Orde, the ACPO president, described—not pejoratively—as the tension that should exist in the relationship. However, as I said in Committee, to some extent, we are talking about shades of grey.

[Mark Reckless]

Is not one limitation of existing case law that an individual litigant—or a company such as International Trader’s Ferry—trying to get the chief constable to do something is different from the relationship that the Minister describes between the police authority and its statutory powers and the chief constable? The Home Affairs Committee heard from witnesses who felt that there is significant scope within the existing regime for police authorities to be more assertive in setting policy—it just happens that they have not done so.

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made. However, the police and crime commissioner, who will have a mandate, could be more assertive. That is the basis and thrust of the chief constables’ concerns. I cited the example of London. The Mayor of London stood on a manifesto of placing uniformed officers on public transport and tackling knife crime. Whether that cut across the operational independence of the Met has been debated but not resolved, but it is significant that those things have happened, and the Metropolitan police have willingly implemented them. We must accept that, to some extent, there are areas of negotiation and shades of grey, which is why all parties agree that it would be a mistake to try to define in statute the notion of operational independence.

However, equally, we are all agreed—as I indicated on Second Reading, the Government were already minded to do this—on drawing up a protocol, as the Home Affairs Committee recommended, to try to set out the precise roles of the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable in the new arrangements, and to broaden the protocol to cover the role of the police and crime panel, given that that is new, and the role of the Home Secretary. It is worth stating that the Government’s intention in introducing that reform is not to abandon the tripartite, but to rebalance it, because we feel that it has been too distorted in the past, particularly in relation to the accrual of power by the centre and the Home Secretary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

I repeat that we do not envisage this being a statutory document. It was originally called a memorandum of understanding by the Select Committee, and I do not think that the Committee’s recommendation envisaged it being a statutory document. Its purpose is to clarify the roles and responsibilities in law. In other words, it will be seeking not to set law but to explain what the law is. The danger is that we will be drawn into a means of setting law, when all the parties involved have so far said that we should not seek to define operational independence by statute. They have said that we should leave the matter to the understanding of the courts and the existing case law.

[Mark Reckless]

Will the Minister agree to supply the document, at least in draft form, to the Home Affairs Committee as well as to the House of Lords? The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office are negotiating, but should not the negotiations be for the tripartite system, although we do not yet have the elected commissioners in place?

[Nick Herbert]

First, the Association of Police Authorities is certainly involved in the drafting; it is part of the group discussing the matter. I agree that negotiations must reflect the tripartite system, and I want to reassure my hon. Friend about that. As to supplying the draft to the Home Affairs Committee, I am happy to agree. Furthermore, if my hon. Friend would like to meet me and officials to discuss it further, I think it would assist our deliberations. I would like to organise that as soon as possible, bearing in mind the considerable experience that my hon. Friend brings as a member of a police authority with a particular view.

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s purpose in proposing amendment 149, according to which

“the police and crime commissioner shall have no involvement”

in deciding whether a person is investigated or directed. In fact, that is the existing common law principle and the courts have consistently stated that the Executive must not interfere in operational law enforcement decisions, so there is no need for that to be written expressly in the Bill.

I hope that the hon. Member for Gedling will accept the good faith with which I agreed with the recommendation of the Home Affairs Select Committee. I hope he will acknowledge that I have listened to the Association of Chief Police Officers and others who have expressed concern about operational independence; restated that we do not seek to cut across that principle; and confirmed that we will bring the draft document before Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity. I appreciate that he would have liked to see it sooner, but I hope he acknowledges the very considerable steps we have taken in this regard.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Mark Reckless]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 151, in clause 28, page 21, line 9, leave out ‘5 or’.

Amendment 152, page 112, line 15, leave out Schedule 5.

[Mark Reckless]

New clause 6 deals with the police and crime panel and, specifically, the powers that it may or may not have in respect of assessing and setting the precept. Ever since I first considered the issue of elected commissioners and their proper role, I have found the issue of budget setting particularly knotty and difficult. As a strong proponent of elected commissioners, I see a good argument for giving them the power to set the precept and the budget, and just letting them get on with that. I can see the argument that they have the mandate, so surely they should make the decision.

However, I have at least a slight concern about giving such significant budget-setting power over a whole electoral term to one individual. That is why I am attracted to some of the ideas we have heard, including from colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches, about the police and crime panel. There has been a very positive, highest common factor rather than a lowest common denominator approach, and the Bill has been improved through the interchange of ideas between Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members.

We have heard about the capping arrangements of the Labour party in recent years. There was capping under previous Conservative Governments but it seemed to become almost standard in Labour’s 13 years in government for Ministers to set a number—it was never quite clear how they determined that number—over which anything, regardless of the circumstances and however low the council tax base, was capped by central Government. That approach seems wrong to me and we have a proposal to deal with it in relation to local government: instead of having a Secretary of State—I assume for Communities and Local Government—capping a council above a certain level, that Secretary of State would have reserve powers to require a local referendum in an area where he considered an increase to be excessive. That strikes me as a reasonably sensible balance, and certainly an improvement on the status quo and the current capping power.

[Dr Huppert]

This issue is effectively about the principle of capping, which causes real problems. Is my hon. Friend aware, in the local government context, of councils in Cambridgeshire that used to charge zero council tax and were prevented by capping from charging any at all? We do not want the same sort of ridiculous problems happening with police precepts.

[Mark Reckless]

Yes, I am aware of that issue. The predecessor council to mine in Medway, Rochester upon Medway council, similarly had no council tax and when Medway took over as a unitary authority, we had one of the lowest council taxes in the country—virtually the lowest except for the Scilly Isles at one point. However, we had the same percentage limit as everyone else, so when central Government put a new burden on local government and we had to fund it as a fixed cost, we were less well-placed to do that because the amount we could get through a percentage increase was less than other councils that had previously had higher taxes could get.

A similar regime to that for local councils has applied to police authorities, but to an extent it has been less controversial than that for councils because police authorities have not had the same democratic mandate as local government. There are only nine elected councillors on my police authority among 17. It is true that the majority of those nine must approve the precept as well as a majority of the 17, but it is certainly less of a democratic mandate than that for local councils in which all the local councillors are elected. I have understood, previously, that when the Communities Secretary, rather than the Home Secretary, has capped an authority, that has not been popular with the authority, but I have understood why it happened. However, I can see the attraction of moving from that to a referendum power as we are doing with local government.

I think there is a potential problem or issue, which I hope can be resolved through the Bill or its application, with bringing in the new body—the local police and crime panel. The panel will have a representative from every council in the police area, and I particularly welcome the involvement of district councils, which have been so important in developing crime and disorder reduction partnerships and community safety partnerships. Their involvement on the ground will be a real advantage: it will bring real insight to the commissioner and the force and it will pull local government more generally into the new arrangements. We hear a lot about the Local Government Association or police authorities not liking the new arrangements, and people who have a particular stake in the existing process might say that, but the districts coming in is going to be a real gain.

There is dispute about how strong the panel will be, and its powers are characterised in various ways, but one of its key powers will be its oversight and scrutiny of the budget. It is proposed that, in extremis, if three quarters of the panel agree, the panel can exercise what is described as a veto in the Bill, and paragraphs 7 and 8 of schedule 5 prescribe that the Secretary of State can make further regulations on that. In Committee, the Minister described some of his intentions for the regulations, but I am a little unclear about that because the regulations referred to in the Bill seem to be about how that veto process will work, whereas quite a lot of the detail that the Minister gave to the Committee seemed to refer to when or where there would be a referendum and the Secretary of State’s involvement. That is one of the issues, because it is envisaged in the Localism Bill that the Secretary of State will have referendum-calling powers and will presumably use regulations to determine how that happens. It is envisaged in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill that the panel will have a veto and that there will be regulations on that. The crossover is not clear. There will be a directly elected individual who will come to office with a great mandate. One of his responsibilities is to set the budget and the precept, yet there are two other bodies—the panel and the Secretary of State; it is not clear whether it is the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government or the Home Secretary—who have at least some locus standi in setting the budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I am interested in the point that the hon. Gentleman made about having to use litigation. There is serious concern about what would happen if, when a budget was set, there was uncertainty and we had to use court orders. I am sure that he is aware of the cost of rebilling, and there is an important principle that we want to set all the amounts of council tax, while we still have council tax, at the same time, rather than send out multiple letters, which would just add to the cost of that process.

[Mark Reckless]

In my reference to litigation, I was alluding to the fact that the prospect of dispute, at least on the first occasion, given the narrow time scales and the costs of rebilling, would not be a positive thing. I have worked closely with my hon. Friend on the Home Affairs Committee on the issue—his hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) is strongly involved in these issues too— and I feel that there is a significant measure of agreement between us. In the coalition, it is important that we decide what we want to do, and state that clearly in the Bill and subsequent regulations so that we do not face the prospect of litigation.

Some Liberal Democrats may like the idea of a complete veto for the panel, but I am not sure that many of my Conservative colleagues would necessarily agree, given that the commissioner has a directly elected mandate and the members of the panel are appointed. However, I am convinced that a measure of financial oversight by the panel and by the councillors from every council who serve on it would be valuable. It will keep the commissioner linked in to local government, which is extremely important. The Minister has a criminal justice portfolio, and there is extraordinary scope for the elected commissioners to act in the wider criminal justice area. However, we do not want a great division to open up between local government and the work of the elected commissioner in criminal justice, so that knitting together is important.

[Steve McCabe]

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about this element, but if it is valid to argue that the commissioner must be virtually in a negotiation position with the panel so that they arrive at the right decision on the precept, I do not understand why, in every other respect, the commissioner should be able to arrive at his decision independently, with the role of the panel being simply to scrutinise it. Why does the hon. Gentleman make an exception in relation to the precept? Surely the logic of his argument is that the panel should have a different set of powers in relation to the commissioner.

[Mark Reckless]

The power over the precept is an extraordinarily important one, particularly over the whole elected term of the commissioner. Even I, as a strong supporter of directly elected commissioners, would be slightly nervous about one individual on his own taking those budgetary decisions for a number of years. I welcome the involvement of the panel in that, but I do not envisage a constant negotiation—[Interruption.] I apologise to the House.

A three quarters majority will be required. What is needed is almost a reserve power, so that if the commissioner wants to slash the budget massively against the will of the local area, or put through really hefty increases, there is some oversight and some way that that can be mitigated. The panel is a sensible body to do that, but we need to be clear what it would then do. Would it veto the plans and would the commissioner be obliged to accept that, or would it just say, “Go away and think again”?

The present wording, “have regard to”, represents an intended compromise, but leads to considerable uncertainty. As none of us wants to see litigation on this aspect, I am proposing instead that we bolster the local crime panel with a clear power. That will not necessarily be a veto as, if it is, it will be a soft veto. If the panel was seriously worried about the precept, there could be a referendum in the local area. The members of the panel would be appointed by the councils in that area, so those councils would bear the cost of a referendum. They would think long and hard before calling a referendum if they were paying for it.

That arrangement would provide some protection. If the commissioner went off in one direction, away from others, it would give some possibility of pulling him back, but it would not make him subject to the panel, because the commissioner would have the directly elected mandate, whereas the panel would be appointed. Giving the panel the power to require a referendum would be a sensible way forward.

We may be envisaging a referendum power, but it seems that we are expecting to import parts of the Localism Bill into the policing environment, when we already have a separate police and crime panel as a check on the elected commissioner, whereas we do not have a similar check in local government. I propose that the two should be distinct and that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government should have the power of referendum for local councils, but in the policing universe where we are setting up a panel that will be representative, that panel should be responsible. In extremis, it would have the power to call a referendum on the local precept. We therefore would not need the central oversight and dictation of the Secretary of State in this area.

The new clause would bring greater clarity and provide the local and democratic arrangements that we need. I commend it to the House.

[Steve McCabe]

I shall be brief. I am intrigued that the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has tabled the new clause. It is a matter of great regret that he was not a member of the Committee that scrutinised the Bill. What we are beginning to hear in his contributions is how much doubt exists in the hearts of Conservative Back Benchers about some of the key elements of the Bill. That was evident in some of his earlier amendments, but it is extremely evident in this group. He is prepared to tolerate a single elected individual having enormous power over the shape and influence of an area police force over a four-year cycle. He is prepared to tolerate a police and crime plan that might change the shape and direction of the force beyond all recognition. Despite being a loyal and active member of a police authority that has massive experience and whose benefits he regularly tells us about, he is prepared to put up with all those measures.

The hon. Gentleman realises in his heart the fundamental danger that, if the Government persist with their present approach to cuts in police funding, at some stage authorities in parts of the country of the kind he represents will be on a collision course with the Government. The police commissioner will be forced to look at the question of the precept as a means of off-setting the budget cuts that the force is facing. The hon. Gentleman does not want to be in that position when a single elected police commissioner is able to bring forward a proposal for a hugely increased precept, because he fears what the electors in his area will say about that and the repercussions for himself and his party followers.

[Mark Reckless]

I must say that that really is not the case and has not been my experience. In Kent we have been able to find significant savings in our budget while protecting the front line and, in the words of our chief constable, have an opportunity to have a more efficient and effective force. As an elected Member, I looked to constituents in the private sector who are suffering and wanted to see some savings made in the police budget. My colleagues did not agree this year—they perhaps did not have the same direct election focus—but then they did come to realise this and we found significant savings. It is because we have that democratic element that we are able to find the savings and get the police to operate more efficiently, and the elected commissioners should be able to do that even better.

[Steve McCabe]

That democratic element cannot be fundamentally unique in relation to setting the precept but absolutely different in relation to any other aspect of the work of the commissioner. It is my contention that the people who support the amendment fear what will happen when the precept has to be ratcheted up to compensate for the cuts. They know that there will be massive electoral consequences and so are seeking to insert a device to denude the commissioner of the one power that they fear more than any other.

Police Funding

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I should first declare an interest: I am a member of the Kent police authority.

It is a pleasure to follow my hon.—and perhaps learned—Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), and I particularly welcome the emphasis he placed on the need for the localisation of policing decisions, as opposed to the centralisation that went on before. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who I have not previously had the pleasure of hearing make a speech. There has been strong representation from the west midlands in today’s debate, and Members representing constituencies in that area have put their case well. The Conservative party was welcomed by chief constable Chris Sims in October when he organised the security for our conference, and we were very impressed with the service we received.

May I first tackle two propositions put forward by Labour Members? The first is that morale in the police is plummeting and that this settlement will lead to a worse service being provided by them. That is not my experience; I am consistently struck by the professionalism of officers in Kent and elsewhere in the country where I meet police officers. In Kent, we have been planning for many months for these grant reductions. The work that has been done and the engagement of every different area of Kent police in finding substantial savings has been extraordinarily impressive. I have not detected any reduction in morale. Officers and staff appreciate that there has been a very serious recession across the country and in the private sector, where many people have lost their jobs, had pay freezes or had severe pay cuts, and that the police family have come through that period very well. In addition, this Government kept to the third year of the pay review that had been agreed, and I know that that was greatly appreciated in many quarters.

The second proposition relates to the debate about police numbers and the level of crime. I heard the interview that the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice gave on Radio 4, in which he made perfectly sensible remarks, and I do not understand the excitement of Labour Members about this issue. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said that the number of West Midlands police officers had increased from 7,135 in 1996 to 8,536 this year. The level of crime did decrease over that period, certainly according to the British crime survey, which Labour Members particularly like to cite. What the hon. Gentleman did not say is that nationally quite a reduction in police numbers took place during part of that period—until about 2002-03—and thereafter those numbers rose. According to the British crime survey, there was a consistent reduction in the level of crime throughout the period—that started in 1994, as we heard from Labour Members yesterday. That does not correlate with the trend in police numbers over that period, so there is no simple link and it is very difficult to show such a correlation statistically.

What I know from my constituency is that police officers, effectively placed and doing the right thing, can make an enormous difference. For example, we introduced neighbourhood task teams to support neighbourhood policing. Medway has had two teams, comprising a sergeant and five or six constables, which support the neighbourhood policing teams, concentrating on particularly difficult high-crime areas. One huge success has been that, through working with other agencies, they have almost eradicated street prostitution in Chatham, which has been a problem for centuries. This is about working with other agencies. A particular team has helped bring about that success, but overall it is not possible to demonstrate a direct or simple relationship between police numbers and crime, and we need to recognise that.

Decisions on police numbers should be taken by local communities. The single most important change that we are about to see in policing is that, for the first time, this will not be about the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) suggesting that the Home Office commission research to decide what to do, or even about this House debating what we want police numbers to be and where we want them to be; this will be a decision for each local community to take, through the commissioner who they elect to oversee and organise their police force locally. That will be a hugely healthy change from the current situation.

I have always found, both as a councillor and as a member of a police authority—and in this House, to an extent—that democratic oversight is one of the key drivers of value for money in public services. This is about scrutinising what the employees, the officers and the people delivering the service are doing and ensuring that they are delivering value for money for the taxpayer. I am not convinced that the same savings have been made in national Government as have been made in areas where there is more direct democratic oversight: in local government and, to an extent, in police authorities. If each Department were to report to the relevant Select Committee and the permanent secretary were to put his budget before that Committee for approval and discussion, item by item, that would help us to find savings.

The Government have set out a strong savings programme, but what I see when I participate in the budget review group and the audit and finance committee of our police authority in Kent is that members of the authority, a majority of whom are elected—it is the elected members who must pass the police precept every year—subject the police officers to an enormous degree of scrutiny. Through that process we have made much more substantial savings than we have been ordered to find by the centre. When we examine the reductions in police grant that are coming, the decision will be taken locally as to what the level of precept will be.

Kent’s new chief constable, whom we brought in from Norfolk, where he had been deputy chief constable and had done fantastic work in improving public confidence, making significant savings and restructuring the force, said that he sees these grant reductions as an opportunity to deliver a more efficient and effective force. [Interruption.] Some hon. Members say that he has no choice, but very often when the money is increased by year and there is not the great pressure to find savings and be efficient, it is human nature for people occasionally not to act as efficiently as they might. Perhaps more people are employed in a particular area or perhaps the focus is on something that needed to be done some years ago when things have moved on and it is not necessarily the priority it once was. It is by finding such savings and having proper democratic oversight of that process that we should be able to make our policing more efficient and effective.

[Jack Dromey]

The constant quest for efficiency and effectiveness is common ground between us, but what has the hon. Gentleman got to say to the people of the west midlands who are led by a chief constable who is the national champion on bureaucracy and they have a police service that has already made very significant changes to promote efficiency and effectiveness, but it now says that because of the scale and speed of what it is being asked to do, there will be significant cuts to front-line policing and some of the best, long-serving officers in the police service will be compulsorily retired?

[Mark Reckless]

Having a national champion on bureaucracy in the way that it has been organised by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which is an organisation that does not entirely respond to this House and has little if any statutory basis, is not the way to tackle bureaucracy. We have had far more success in finding savings in Kent by having a majority of elected members who sit down with the officers who spend the money.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman rightly says that the work is best done locally, and he showed me the good work being done in Kent when I went to visit his constituency, but there is a need to share good practice. What I saw in Rochester and Strood ought to be rolled out in other parts of the country. So even though the savings are made locally, there needs to a mechanism—it could be the Home Office or this could be done through Jan Berry—that will make sure that other police authorities can follow what Kent is doing.

[Mark Reckless]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of our Home Affairs Committee, for his comments. He has kindly arranged to use our website to promote some of that good practice, such as the safe exit scheme and our offender management unit, in which we are working closely with probation and other agencies. There is enormous scope for savings through such collaboration.

I do not understand why most forces in the country are not making significant savings through collaboration. I know that Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire have quite a strong programme, but I have not seen any other forces that have anything like the level of collaboration or are making the savings that have been delivered in Kent and Essex. That might be because the forces and counties of Kent and Essex are of a similar size and there might not be the sensitivities about one force being perceived to be taking the lead. It might also be because the personalities and individuals involved are particularly committed to the process. We now have, however, one single directorate to deal with all organised, serious and major crime. A substantial number of police officers have been transferred from each force into a joint directorate that reports to a single assistant chief constable. We have a single director of IT and we procure all our services through a joint procurement centre, and I do not understand why other forces have not taken the opportunity to find savings so that they can reinvest them in the front line. It is happening to an extent, but collaboration elsewhere has been very disappointing.

I am speaking about collaboration not just between forces but between different agencies, such as working with councils—a point we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). In Medway we have a basic command unit that is coterminous with the unitary council. That might have assisted us, but it is by working as a team and focusing the resources on the areas where the public want to see them used that we have managed to find savings, to cut crime and to improve confidence at the same time.

Although the process is different in policing from elsewhere in the public sector, there will be the introduction of directly elected police commissioners alongside the front-loading of the reductions, the potential pay freezes for two years and the review of terms of conditions—and I greatly welcome the work that Tom Winsor is doing. I made the point in my ten-minute rule Bill about the importance of police forces’ being able to make a rational decision about how many officers, PCSOs and other civilians they need—that issue has also been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak—and it is essential that forces should have the freedom to make that decision. I am delighted that Tom Winsor is working so hard on that and we look forward to his interim report in February. We must knit together the democratic control and the greater efficiency through collaboration, as well have as a sensible review of terms and conditions while recognising how much the police do and what they do to serve this country and our communities. These estimates and the proposals for directly elected police commissioners are the way forward. They will lead to a revolution in policing in our country that will put the public in charge. It is possible for that to happen even in the tightened financial environment in which we find ourselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I agree with him, but the situation varies from force to force. The leadership and management of individual forces are important; best practice has been mentioned in that regard. Cheshire constabulary has invested a lot of time in special constables because the force is relatively small, and I respectfully suggest that other forces—I am not thinking of any particular force, but perhaps the metropolitan and larger forces—could learn a thing or two about recruiting specials.

The hon. Gentleman says that the officer in charge of his constabulary is never sure how many specials will be on duty at a certain time, but this comes down to leadership and management. The senior officers in my constituency know exactly how many special constables will be there on the all-important Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, which is when additional help is strongly appreciated. I have spoken to special constables who have ambitions to become regular policemen. They work during the day and volunteer their time in the evenings, including Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I do not say that they could be a long-term replacement, but merely point out that in the short term I do not accept what I hear chief constables say about front-line cuts in officers. There are creative ways in which specials can be used as a solution in the short term, rather than talking about headline cuts.

PCSOs also play an important role and really involve themselves in the community. I have heard worrying stories about many PCSOs being lost across the country, but they can be paid for through local precepting in town and parish councils. I also find that moneys are held in town and parish council accounts for emergencies. I encourage all chief constables and senior officers to look around their communities to see whether any funds have been siphoned or hidden away for a rainy day. I get very concerned when I hear about those vital officers being made redundant, because I do not accept that it is necessary, especially in the short term.

When I went out on Friday night and in Runcorn previously, I was struck by the fact that Cheshire force sends its police out singly. They go out on their own but have significant and efficient back-up available at a moment’s notice, which means that there are many police officers on public view. Earlier, I heard it said that 11% of officers are available at any one time, but in Cheshire a significant number of officers are out on the beat working on their own, and support is there for them very quickly if need be.

Cutting the amount of police time spent on paperwork has not really been mentioned. A previous Prime Minister talked about being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. One thing that we could do as a society and as a country is to tackle the abuse of alcohol. Virtually every call on Friday evening involved people who were badly intoxicated and reliant on alcohol. They had lost structure in their lives and it was quite pitiful to be called to the streets or their homes to assist them.

I cannot help feeling that local authorities that grant long, late-night licences to clubs in town centres and elsewhere, enabling alcohol to be served at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning, put huge pressures on police authorities and forces. Things might be relatively quiet until 11 o’clock at night, but at 2 o’clock in the morning there is mayhem on the streets with intoxicated people brawling. On Friday night—I was told that it was a relatively quiet night—PC Frost was out in force but there were still several arrests of people fighting in the streets of Northwich. Local authorities have a big role to play and they need to communicate better with the police regarding recommendations on late licensing.

[Mark Reckless]

My hon. Friend refers to PC Frost and the need for other agencies to work with the police as appropriate. Is he aware of an incident in Kent in which the police control centre received a call—this has been publicised—from a woman asking the police to come out because someone had stolen the snowman she had built in her front garden?

[Graham Evans]

Yes, we were laughing about that on Friday night. The Kent accents were particularly distinct and we had a laugh about it. There are still plenty of snowmen in Cheshire—at least there were when I left on Monday. [Interruption.] Snow joke indeed.

Local authorities will grant late night licensing to pubs and clubs on the one hand, but on the other they are particularly restrictive regarding new businesses. In my area, a new application has been submitted for a restaurant bar in a particularly pleasant location, but because it is a continental-style restaurant—it has no taps on the bar and serves continental lagers and wine by the glass—the local authority restricts its licence. People have to drink up by 8 o’clock and the doors have to be closed, which makes the business unviable. We need to look at our licensing laws and help the police do what they are supposed to do, which is to protect us from violent criminals.

To sum up, police forces do not have to cut front-line policing but should utilise the special constabulary. If people want to become police officers, there is no better way of showing commitment than by volunteering their time and serving their community in the current difficult economic climate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

The Minister will hide behind local precepting and councils raising money to make up some of the gap, but that is smoke and mirrors—a sleight of hand. There is a 20% reduction in central Government funding to police forces across the country. That goes beyond the HMIC recommendation. Hon. Members must understand that although some money can be saved through efficiency, that amount cannot be saved without impacting on the front line.

[Mark Reckless]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way after I finish this point. The Home Secretary failed to fight the police’s corner in the spending review negotiations, so it falls to Parliament to stand up for the law-abiding public against these reckless cuts.

[Mark Reckless]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the difference between 20% and 12% that he describes makes no allowance for savings from things such as a pay freeze and changes in terms and conditions?

[Vernon Coaker]

I am quoting the Green Book and the HMIC report. We will see over the next one, two, three and four years whether the hon. Gentleman is right in the statistics that he has quoted from this book—that saving and this saving. We will see whether what he says stands up in police forces in Kent, Nottinghamshire, the west midlands and elsewhere across England and Wales, or whether we will see massive losses of police officers, police community support officers and police staff. Then we will see who has understood the statistics and figures correctly, and who is actually right. I will have a side wager with the hon. Gentleman, and it will not be me who is out of pocket, but him.

I repeat the call that has been made to the Home Secretary and other Ministers to go back and say to the Treasury that the police spending settlement is not acceptable, that it must be reopened and improved. Will the Minister give us that commitment in discussing the estimates for 2011-12, or does he just intend to carry on with the settlement as it stands? As the hon. Member for Hexham said, choices are available to the Government. The Minister can try to argue for a better deal, like those for schools, hospitals and the Ministry of Defence. The big casualty in the comprehensive spending review was the Home Office, and therefore the police service and police forces of this country. I know that the Minister says that there is no link between levels of crime and police numbers, but that is not what the public say.

Let us look at some examples. The hon. Member for South Dorset is already getting cold feet about reductions in police officer numbers in his area, and he will not be the only one. Hon. Members will have to go back and say that things will be tough. There will be police officer cuts across the country: Greater Manchester police have announced a cut of 1,387 officers and 1,557 staff; North Wales police have announced that 440 posts will be cut, made up of 230 police officers and 210 staff; Northumbria police have announced a cut of 450 civilian staff; Thames Valley police have announced 800 staff cuts, but there is no breakdown between police officers and police staff; and West Midlands police have announced a cut of 2,200 posts, made up of 1,100 police officers and 1,100 staff.

Whatever the book says, and whatever Government Members say, I am willing to go to each and every one of their constituencies and ask the public whether they want fewer police officers or more police officers on their streets. I will ask them whether they believe that the Government should have prioritised police spending more in the Budget so that police officer posts, police staff and PCSOs could have been protected, or whether they were a price worth paying.

A few months into this new Tory-led Government, I believe that people will be astonished that police recruitment has been frozen, thousands of police officer posts are to be lost and experienced police officers will be forced to retire, including in my own area of Nottinghamshire.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I make the point again: the hon. Lady does not appear to disagree with any of those proposals, but they were not priorities of the Labour party when it was in office. That is not where the money went. The Labour Government spent money on a colossal scale, but it did not go into the objectives that this Government now advocate.

Otherwise, to be fair, the hon. Lady makes a valid point. The House should understand that achieving the results that we want will take time. We are dealing with difficult problems, such as mentally ill prisoners, which are incapable of instant, overnight solution—[Interruption.] It is no good her making gestures about spending money, because simply spending money on mentally ill prisoners will not get us very far. We must spend money intelligently.

We are talking about a whole Parliament, but I emphasise that payment by results does not involve putting money up front. It avoids the danger of giving grants to this or that hopeful-sounding idea or project. Sadly, some of those projects do not work. Paying by results means that we will pay for what works. The projects that succeed will spread more rapidly.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The secure training centre in my constituency protects the community when young people are locked up there, and often teaches them to read. As that costs more than £100,000 a year, what will the Secretary of State do to ensure that those benefits carry over when those young people are released?

[Mr Clarke]

It costs about £170,000 a year to keep somebody in a young offenders institution. Those who think that the numbers being detained are inadequate might reflect upon that. I agree strongly with my hon. Friend that what matters is the rehabilitative supervision that is in place after detention, with the support to deal with whatever the young person’s problems are in addition to his bad behaviour. In that way, we ensure that we reduce to the absolute minimum the risk of his reoffending and getting back into the system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

2. What proportion of young offenders reoffended within one year of being released from custody in the latest period for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

16. What proportion of young offenders reoffended within (a) one and (b) two years of being released from custody in the latest period for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

The latest reoffending rate for young people, those aged between 10 and 17, released from custody in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2008 is 74.3%. Reoffending rates for young people are based on whether an offender has been convicted at court or has received an out-of-court disposal for an offence in the year following release from custody.

[Mr Blunt]

There are many isolated examples of really good practice all over the country, and our challenge is to systemise it so that people can learn from what works, experience the flexibility and the opportunity to implement it and deliver the output, which then effectively turns those young people away from crime.

[Mark Reckless]

Given the abject failure of the Youth Justice Board to reduce reoffending among our young people, what plans does the Minister have to replace it, and in particular what role does he envisage for the private and voluntary sectors in that area?

[Mr Blunt]

The functions of the Youth Justice Board will be taken into the Ministry of Justice, but I am not sure that I would be quite as condemnatory as my hon. Friend is about the board’s record. It has achieved success in getting youth offending teams effectively embedded within a local delivery framework, and it is now up to the Ministry of Justice and myself, as the Minister for Youth Justice, to take that work forward and take responsibility for it.