Police and Crime Commissioners and ACPO

Debate between Mark Reckless and Damian Green

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Green]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am about to come on to the college and its vital, central role in future, but first I will point out the one part of the Parker review with which I disagree: the need for a centralised change management programme for police reform, potentially run from the Home Office. That is exactly what we do not need and is very much against the ethos of the more accountable, locally driven and bottom-up police service that we are introducing. That is one of the reasons why I am so glad that the PCCs have grasped the nettle of reform themselves, because it shows that we do not need a small group in the Home Office driving all change.

[Mark Reckless]

The PCCs I have spoken to do not interpret the report in that way. I can see how the Minister might, reading it broadly, but that has not been their interpretation, to the extent that change management is needed and the Home Office’s co-operation with that is desired. I believe that is an issue for the transitional final year funding that PCCs are prepared to offer to help the Home Office to ensure that ACPO’s functions are wound down and that the appropriate transition is made.

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. I thought that that was what I had said. I am conscious that PCCs want to do that. I am not saying that there is no role for the Home Office—there is of course a role for it, and we have a very senior official sitting on the transition committee precisely so that the legitimate interest that the Home Office has in the process can be represented at this vital time of change.

I have been invited to talk about the College of Policing, however, so I will. We saw before Christmas with the code of ethics that the media and the public are increasingly—and rightly—looking to the college to speak boldly on how it believes the police should response to press and public concerns, in the way that, in the past, they would have looked to ACPO. The college has taken on much that we used to look to ACPO to provide—setting out the case for change, providing leadership and enabling police forces to provide a more effective service to their communities.

In future, we will be looking to the college as the body responsible for developing a better police force, for identifying the challenges that policing faces and for setting out how those challenges should be met. In future the college will come up with the big ideas for reforms to improve the way policing is delivered. I expect to see the college providing dynamic leadership in the face of a wide range of challenges, including reducing bureaucracy, increasing officer discretion and driving the modernisation of the police.

To achieve all that, the college will need to be visible not just to the few at the top of the police or to the many thousands working in policing but—perhaps most important of all—to the general public, without whom the police could not be effective. We have always had a model of policing by consent. The famous dictum of Robert Peel, that the

“police are the public and the public are the police”

needs constant reinvention in every age. It will be to the college that Governments, the police and the public will look to interpret how we achieve that hugely desirable end, which has always been at the heart of British policing, in the 21st century.

We have talked about accountability today, and I agree that it is important. The college is accountable through its board, with a far greater range of people from right across policing responsible for taking decisions about the way the college works. It will also be accountable to Parliament for the standards it sets.

[Mark Reckless]

The key is that the range of people on that board include a serious number of PCCs, who are elected. That is the difference, surely.

[Damian Green]

It is one difference, but the most important difference, and the next thing I was going to say, is how inclusive the college is. It is for the whole of policing: officers, staff, special constables and volunteers. There is a wide range of people on the college board as well as on its professional committee. As my hon. Friend says, that rightly includes PCCs, who are themselves directly elected.

The college is new and new organisations need time to get their strategy and structures in place, and to make sure that they have the right people in post to deliver their aims, but there has already been huge progress. In September, the college published its strategic intent, inviting views on its strategy, including on whether police officers and staff should pay a fee to join. In October, it consulted on the code of ethics for police officers and members of police staff. While we are debating the changes to ACPO here today, the college is working through its longer term structures and developing its commercial strategy. All that is being progressed alongside the work the college is doing on direct entry, on the threshold tests linking pay to skills, on police digitisation and on freeing up police time. It is essential that everyone not only gives the college time to develop but supports it in that development. It will be a vital institution for the future success of policing in this country.

We should all recognise that it will not be some diktat from the Home Office or lever pulled by the Policing Minister that will bring about reform. We need to work in partnership with police and crime commissioners and chief constables to ensure that the model for the future is the right one. We continue to take a strong interest and financially to support those critical national functions that chief constables undertake and must continue to deliver, namely those where operational co-ordination is needed on national issues. Critical national functions including the national police co-ordination centre and the ACPO criminal records office must continue so that we safeguard work on, for example, the sharing of international criminal information across the EU and the rest of the world—clearly an area of increasing importance to the police.

Sir Nick Parker’s review was comprehensive and looked at the future of ACPO in the round. It concluded that reform was needed to ensure that chief constables have a forum with functions and structures that fit the new police reform landscape. I support that objective. The changes to the policing landscape that followed the publication of the review of ACPO will take time to unfold. Once those changes take place, it will be essential that they work. We have already seen the changes the Government have made to this part of the policing landscape through the creation of the college. Those changes have worked because they have been supported by all parts of policing—by chief constables, PCCs, the Police Superintendents Association, the Police Federation and those trade unions that have members who are police staff. The changes to ACPO need to be worked through in exactly the same way.

I am grateful to ACPO and its members. Chief constables have shown the ability to adapt and evolve to meet new challenges. That pragmatic, reforming approach will need to continue as police reform and, in particular, a sharper focus on public accountability and transparency continue to drive change across the policing landscape.

Question put and agreed to.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Mark Reckless and Damian Green

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I thank hon. Members from all parties, not just for their universal support for the measures, but for the sensitive and sensible tone with which they have conducted the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) will by now be blushing because of the amount of praise she has received. She should note that it has not been conventional praise—it is not a case of the House being conventionally polite—but that everyone, from all parties, really means it. She and the charities she has rightly mentioned have conducted an exemplary campaign on an issue of great contemporary importance. It is a subject that a few people have cared about hugely for ages, and now the whole country understands the important and urgent need to take effective action, which is precisely what we are seeking to do.

[Mark Reckless]

The Minister has said that a few people campaigned on the issue. Does he agree that others failed to follow through on this because they did not understand and recognise what was happening, and that some people perceived that earlier than they did?

London Metropolitan University

Debate between Mark Reckless and Damian Green

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I have heard that suggestion from London Metropolitan, which is precisely why, when the concerns were first expressed after a visit in March, the UKBA deliberately looked for contemporary samples. The figures I gave earlier to the hon. Member for Islington North relate to students who have come under the new management regime, so we are talking about up-to-date systemic problems, not historic systemic problems.

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

I congratulate the Minister on cutting immigration, with student visas down by over 100,000. Might his action against London Met have a further salutary effect, by showing that universities as well as colleges have to uphold immigration control?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely, and not just universities and colleges, of course, but employers too. The message that we have been sending out for some time is now getting out there. Everyone who is a highly trusted sponsor needs to behave like a highly trusted sponsor. If they cannot be highly trusted, they will no longer be a highly trusted sponsor and allowed to bring in foreign workers or foreign students.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Debate between Mark Reckless and Damian Green

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

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

With respect to any running commentary from the Home Office, my recollection is that we gave something approaching a commitment, at least in opposition, that Hizb ut-Tahrir was an organisation that we wished to proscribe. I understand that there may be difficulties, but it is reasonable to press the Minister for a clearer understanding of the process with regard to this organisation.

[Damian Green]

With respect to my hon. Friend, I really do not think that it is sensible in such sensitive matters for Ministers to give running commentaries at the Dispatch Box on whether organisations might be about to be proscribed. That applies to any organisation of any kind and background, for obvious reasons that I think he will recognise. That would not be a sensible course of action. There is ample evidence to suggest that the TTP is concerned in terrorism.