Policing and Crime Bill

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

From the start, I want to make it clear that we welcome many of the proposals in the Bill. There are many constructive and positive proposals on which we will seek to build in Committee. We welcome, for example, the improvements to—nay, the fundamental reform of—the IPCC, an organisation that is badly in need of that.

In a very good debate, both the shadow Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made a powerful case for the fact that Hillsborough demands that those who covered up are called to account. We therefore hope that the Government will think again about the 12-month limit. We also welcome what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), and the constructive response of the Government, about having to learn lessons from the very sad case of Poppi Worthington.

We welcome the additional steps to protect police whistleblowers and the updates to the firearms and alcohol licensing legislation. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), made a powerful case for the more general consolidation of firearms legislation, but the steps contained in the Bill are a welcome step in the right direction. On alcohol licensing, I hope that the Policing Minister listened to the rather intelligent contribution made by the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) about appropriate changes that might be made during the passage of the Bill.

We welcome the improvements to how the police deal with people suffering from mental health crises and the fact that police cells will no longer be considered a mental health safe place. To this end, there were some first-class contributions from the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris). We will certainly seek to work together across the House on the legitimate issues of concern that have been raised.

We welcome the measures to ensure that 17-year-olds detained in police custody are treated as children, and at this point I pay tribute to the hard campaigning work done by my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on this issue over many years.

We also welcome the proposals on police bail, but my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee was right to point out that the case of Paul Gambaccini underlined that we have a system open to abuse, with protracted uncertainty. On the other hand, however, the shadow Home Secretary was absolutely right robustly to argue that there are also dangerous loopholes and that the Dhar case shows that further steps need to be taken to ensure that terrorist suspects do not flee our shores.

It is often at the most difficult, traumatic and devastating times in a person’s life that they come into contact with the emergency services. The police, fire and ambulance services are the final safety net in the most difficult situations. That is why at the heart of this issue is the fact that the British public want to know that if they dial 999 in the most desperate times, there will be a police officer, firefighter or a paramedic ready to come to their assistance. They want to know that the officer, firefighter or paramedic who comes will not take too long, is properly trained and has the right equipment. Providing such a service and, crucially, ensuring that it is well resourced and adequately funded and staffed, is surely one of the most important duties of any Government.

Equally, at the other end of the spectrum, it is the Government’s duty to do their utmost to ensure that citizens do not get into that critical situation to begin with. This can involve preventive work, whether that is good neighbourhood policing or the fire service’s excellent work on fire prevention such as that at the ground-breaking Safeside facility in Birmingham, close to my constituency. Crucial, too, are good community relations, education work, preventing harm and risk, and stopping people from getting to that critical desperate stage. Achieving that is the crucial duty of any Government, but it is those duties that I have described that Ministers all too often fail to honour.

The Home Secretary once again asserted today that police reform is working and crime is falling. In the debate, we heard some good examples of progressive police reform over the past five years that we support, such as the establishment of the College of Policing, which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) referred to in his contribution. Nevertheless, for all the talk of reform, the Bill cannot cover up the fact that the Government have failed to protect the police. Some 18,000 police officers have gone—12,000 from the frontline and 1,300 in the past six months alone. Nearly 5,000 police community support officers have gone. Community policing has been increasingly hollowed out, putting the community at risk. There is increasing evidence of growing concerns among the public about the visibility of their police service on the one hand and, on the other, a crisis of morale in the police service, whose members serve this country so well.

In the previous Parliament there were cuts of 25%. In this Parliament, we have already had the broken promise from the Government that they will protect budgets, as £160 million in real terms will be cut in the next year. The public are being asked to pay more for less. The hon. Member for North West Hampshire was right to talk about resilience, but there must be growing uncertainty about the capacity of our police service to respond at a time of a crisis such as that in 2011.

The Government have also failed to protect the fire service from the sharp knife of austerity, as they cut it by 23% in the previous Parliament. When that is taken with the cuts in this Parliament, the fire service is being cut nearly in half. According to the National Audit Office:

“Savings have come predominantly from reducing staff costs.”

Thousands of firefighters have gone and response times are getting longer. In the west midlands alone, 294 full-time fire personnel have gone.

Not only have the Government failed to protect funding for our crucial emergency services, but they have slashed funding in the most unfair way possible. The Policing Minister waxes lyrical about being a former firefighter, and I pay tribute to his origins. We have much in common, but my understanding of firefighters is that normally they put fires out. On this occasion, the Minister started a fire with the omnishambles of the review of the police funding formula, for which he was good enough to apologise on the Floor of the House. That Home Office blunder means that high-need, high-crime areas such as Northumbria and the West Midlands have seen cuts that are twice as big as those in Surrey.

Similarly, the Government have failed to address a fire funding formula that, in the words of the National Audit Office, means that

“the Department has reduced funding most to fire and rescue authorities with the highest levels of need.”

Time and again we have seen this unfairness of approach and broken promises to the public.

As for the protestation that crime is falling, it is certainly true, as we have said repeatedly, that volume crime is falling—for example, cars are now much more difficult to steal. However, crime is not falling; it is changing. Only six days ago in this Chamber the Policing Minister acknowledged in answer to a question that as people are now more likely to be mugged online than in the street, when at last the truth is told on crime and those 6 million crimes are included in the crime survey of England and Wales, the survey will show a very substantial increase in crime. May we have an end to the protestation of that which is plainly wrong?

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I am a little concerned that we seem to be going down the route of accepting that physical crime is no longer happening. In my constituency, violent crime is up by 24%, and it is worth acknowledging—[Interruption.] It is worth acknowledging on both sides of the House—Government Members should stop pointing their fingers at the Opposition—that there is still a significant issue around physical crime. People are worried about the lack of a police presence on the street and about everything being moved online, and such a focus could really undermine that police presence.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If one looks at the profoundly worrying trends in violent crime and sexual crime, it is clear that, after a generation of progress, we are now seeing, in the words of Sir Hugh Orde, a tipping point being reached, with worrying signs of some of the most serious crimes going up. Let us have an end to the protestation that crime is falling when it is doing nothing of the kind.

The sensible measures in the Bill—there are many—cannot hide the fact that the Government are failing to protect the emergency services and the public in the way they should. On the fire service, they talk of collaboration. The Opposition understand the power of collaboration. I have seen it first hand, and the Policing Minister will have seen it as a result of his previous experience, as well as now as a Member of Parliament and Minister. The Opposition absolutely understand the importance of greater collaboration and integration, not just between police and fire, but with the national health service, local government and a range of statutory agencies.

There are already some innovative and effective examples of blue-light collaboration across the country, many of which were initiated by Labour police and crime commissioners. One that I saw first hand in Coventry was led by the fire service and involved excellent joint working on getting vulnerable people and taking pre-emptive action to protect them. In Greater Manchester, local authority leaders have worked with fire, ambulance and health services to oversee excellent examples of joint working and more meaningful integration. Irlam fire station in Salford is one of the first in the country to host fire services, police and paramedics under one roof, which means that front-line officers are working together every day to improve the service to the public. The station also provides vital community health services.

Those are some of the excellent examples of the best practice in collaboration that we very much want to encourage, but there is a real risk under the Government’s proposals that the fire service will become a poor relation to the other emergency services, disappearing as a statutory service in its own right—the notion of a single employer being profoundly suspect—and potentially being taken over by a police and crime commissioner, whatever local people and locally elected representatives have to say. I was surprised, in what was a good contribution, that the hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) downplayed the importance of the voice of locally elected representatives being heard. The Opposition say yes to greater collaboration, but it must be led by local need and with local agreement from all parties concerned. That was why the shadow Home Secretary was absolutely right to say that a simple takeover by a PCC, supported by the Home Secretary, regardless of what local people want, cannot be right.

On volunteers, there is a long and honourable tradition —several Members on both sides of the House spoke to this—of specials on the one hand and neighbourhood watch on the other. I made a presentation on Friday to Maureen Meehan from the neighbourhood watch scheme in Stockland Green. She is an outstanding woman who has helped to run that scheme for 29 years in her local community, so there is a long and honourable tradition of voluntary contribution. However, as our brilliant police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, Vera Baird, has rightly said:

“Volunteers have a very important role to play in supporting policing, but not to place themselves in potentially dangerous situations…When the Home Secretary consulted on her proposals to increase volunteers’ powers, I said at the time she was trying to provide policing on the cheap.”

Moreover, the public demand it as absolutely vital that essential police functions are discharged by police officers. That point was made by the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies), speaking from his experience as a former police officer. Many volunteers want to support the work of police officers, but do not want to do their jobs for them. As Vera Baird has said, the use of CS and pepper spray should be undertaken only by full-time officers who are regularly trained in their usage and, importantly, in the law surrounding their use. As such, we will probe the Government’s proposals rigorously. We will oppose plugging gaping holes in the police workforce with volunteers, as well as any further moves to privatise essential police functions.

Let me return to the positive, but stake out where we hope to go during the passage of the Bill. We genuinely welcome measures to change the police’s treatment of those with mental health problems, but mental health care still does not have the parity of esteem that the Prime Minister recently spoke about. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham made a powerful contribution in that regard. As other services contend with funding reductions, there is a growing crisis in our mental health system, and progress on the concordat has been painfully slow. As a consequence, sadly, the police are still all too often the service of last resort. In January, The Guardian revealed that they are spending up to 40% of their time on mental health-related incidents. We are glad that the Government recognise, as we do, that police cells are no place for those suffering from a mental health crisis. However, as the shadow Home Secretary said, banning inappropriate places of safety alone will not solve the problem of why police cells are used in the first place—a lack of beds and alternative places of safety.

There is a great national will to tackle the evil of child sex exploitation. The one measure in the Bill on that is a welcome step in the right direction, but it is not, in itself, enough. The most recent data from the NSPCC, which have been brought to the attention of us all, estimate that half a million children are being abused. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham has worked so hard to expose, and as the shadow Home Secretary said, one year on from the landmark summit held by the Prime Minister to determine a response to child sex exploitation, which was a very welcome initiative, many of the Government’s key pledges remain unfulfilled. The national child abuse taskforce still has not been established. As a result, the whistleblowing portal has no taskforce to report to if more large-scale child abuse cases arise.

On firearms, as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said, we welcome the Government’s proposals updating the existing law in line with the recommendations of the Law Commission. We are keen to work with the Government on the next stages, including on explicitly outlawing new threats such as the printing of firearms by 3D printing machines. The Home Office recognised that as a problem three years ago, but has failed to act thus far, so we hope that we can make progress in the context of the Bill. We will seek to amend the Bill to stop the sale of not only firearms, but something equally injurious to health and safety: zombie knives, which are terrible weapons that can have only one purpose—to inflict grievous harm on the individual.

I am pleased that we see in the Bill welcome progress that has been argued for on both sides of the House, as has been reflected in the debate. There is much common ground—of that there is no doubt—but, as the shadow Home Secretary said, we will try to improve the Bill, and there are fundamental issues in relation to fire, tougher police bail and more accountability in the complaints arrangements that we will seek to reach agreement on. Sadly, if that proves not to be possible, we will divide the House.

We cannot let the debate conclude without paying tribute to the people about whom we have been talking all day. We agree that the brave men and women in our emergency services are ordinary people doing often extraordinary things in the most difficult circumstances. They deserve nothing but the best from this House of Commons, and that is precisely what we intend to stand up for.