Former Steelworks Site in Redcar
Debate between Mike Hill and Simon Clarke(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Clarke
The entire development corporation project and the Mayor’s office are funded publicly, in a manner that is completely open to public scrutiny. As with all devolved administrations across the country, the Mayor’s Office is there to champion the interests of the local area. It requires a certain amount of staffing to do that, but I think that the leadership that is being shown from that office is absolutely integral to our hopes as an area of standing up on the stage alongside big cities such as Newcastle and Leeds, which have traditionally had a much louder voice than areas such as the Tees valley. With the disparate cluster of local authorities, we have not been able to speak with one voice. What has been achieved through devolution has astonished me. I was a sceptic about the devolution model; I thought it might just add another tier of intermediate, ineffective and bureaucratic government. It has done the opposite: it has leveraged an extraordinary amount of localised control and, more than that, has created a platform for Teesside to speak out nationally and internationally. That is a wonderful thing.
Police Funding
Debate between Mike Hill and Simon Clarke(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who touched on important points. I certainly echo her comment about people seeking comfort in the arms of companies that purport to provide some kind of policing service. That is clearly unacceptable and wrong. If people are feeling the need to do that, that is probably a concern to all of us in the House.
Policing in Cleveland has been a source of lasting controversy throughout my life. That is not a reflection on the rank and file officers; it reflects the corrosive breach of trust between too many senior figures in authority and the public whom they serve. At a time when our force undoubtedly faces real financial pressures—I take on board everything that the hon. Lady said—it sticks in my throat and those of many of my constituents that there have been such enormous pay-offs for officers who have left the force having been grievously wronged.
A short list would include the payment of £457,000 in November 2016 to Nadeem Saddique, a firearms officer subject to racist abuse, and the £185,000 paid in January 2017 to settle cases for four officers, again related to racial discrimination.
Mr Clarke
Like everyone, I welcome signs of improvement in the force. I pay tribute to the work of outgoing Chief Constable Iain Spittal and I wish our new Chief Constable Mike Veale every success. However, the truth is that the consequences of these historical allegations continue to damage the force’s finances: the most recent pay-out was half a million to Mark Dias, again for bullying and discrimination. More than that, they damage public trust in the force. That ongoing legacy continues to damage the situation in Cleveland today.
In an earlier intervention, I promised that I would come back to the hon. Member for Redcar about the balance of how policing is deployed across Cleveland. There is an issue about how the force allocates resources across our area. The only manned police station in East Cleveland in my constituency is in Guisborough; it is manned by a slender force of a couple of officers and a few police community support officers.
There is real angst in those communities about the fact that the 1,300 officers of Cleveland police are so under-deployed in rural East Cleveland. I am the first to accept that the problems of crime can be less apparent in rural communities, but the truth is that there is a problem of under-reporting of crime in those communities. If there is one message that I want to get out this evening, it is that if my constituents see crime, they should report it to the authorities. I hear from too many people that they simply do not have faith that Cleveland police will follow it up. That is a real concern.