Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Penning and Peter Bone(8 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
Whether police stations are open or not, and where they should be open, is an operational matter for the police force. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s local force commander and the police and crime commissioner have heard exactly what he says, but this is a matter for local policing and not something for the Minister to get involved in.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On the police funding settlement, would it help the Minister if, when the country votes to come out of the European Union, part of the £350 million a week the UK people give to Europe was spent on police funding?
Mike Penning
The Home Secretary negotiated brilliantly the funding agreement for the next four years. That was exceptionally good to hear.
Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London
Debate between Mike Penning and Peter Bone(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I would challenge whether that is true. I hear this from police officers all the time: when they ask social services when they realised that Mary or Johnny had not been visited and they have not heard from them, the answer is that it was earlier in the week. This nearly always happens on a Friday evening. I am not saying that the police will not respond—of course they will—but we should not be continually asking the police to do something that they are fundamentally not trained to do. Social services need to step up to the plate.
We have changed the rules, particularly on holding juveniles in cells. We were told that that could not work, but what was happening was fundamentally wrong and illegal. A place of safety for someone with a mental illness or a learning difficulty is not a police cell. It is actually and fundamentally an important place that they should be taken to. I was in Holborn recently and we did exactly that. Traditionally, people would have been taken back to the cells—section 135 or 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 might have been used to detain them. We are changing that more and more as we bring in mental health professionals—paid for by the NHS in most cases—who may be embedded with the police in custody facilities, although actually more of them are triaging people out on the streets. That is the sort of thing that is required. We have to have other experts from other departments. We have to break down these silos to try to ensure—[Interruption.] Hon. Members ask from a sedentary position where that is happening. It is happening around the country now. We must not say that it is acceptable that the police are being used inappropriately, and they have been for many years—not just under this Administration, but prior to that.
It is fundamentally important to make this point. Yes, there is a debate—a discussion—but the British public are safer today than they have ever been from traditional crime, which continues to fall. We must ensure that we put all our resources into protecting them from the new types of crime, particularly terrorism. Of course neighbourhood policing is a very important part of that, but it is not about buildings or stations; it is about people delivering the help that the public need.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
I apologise to Karen Buck, but we do not have time to come back to her for a winding-up speech.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Safer Neighbourhood policing in London.
Arrests of Chinese Protesters
Debate between Mike Penning and Peter Bone(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
This seems to be extraordinary. If only three people were arrested when a lot of people were wanting to protest, the police must have allowed protest. If there were a complaint about 300 people being arrested, I would understand the problem, but not when there were only three.
Mike Penning
As I said in my statement, a lot of preparation work was done to ensure that people had the right to protest peaceably, as the law stipulates. But if the police made a decision to arrest—and they have made that decision—that is an operational matter and not a matter for the Police Minister to comment on.