Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London

Debate between Mike Penning and Ruth Cadbury

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mike Penning]

I will have to write to right hon. and hon. Members, as I will not have time to deal with all the points now, because we are going over the debate that we have already had. However, Operation Trident has done fantastic work, with local information, in the hon. Lady’s constituency, so arrests and prosecutions have taken place. That is happening today.

I will have the honour and privilege in the next couple of weeks of going to Hendon for the passing-out parade, so more officers will be coming out of basic training. On PCSOs, the commissioner has already announced that there will be no reduction from the present levels. I think we would accept that that is right and proper.

Let me also touch on some of the points to do with representation. I think that is really important. Actually, this is one of the things that the commissioner has done that I think is really important, and the Mayor of London has supported it as well. The commissioner has said that recruits—people who want to join the police—have to live in their communities. There is an exemption, which is right and proper, for our armed forces. I was born and bred in Edmonton, but I went off and joined the Army at 16. When I left the Army, I would never have been allowed to join the Met police under the present rules unless there was an exemption for our armed forces. That exemption is right and proper.

However, I think we need to go further. I would say this as a Hertfordshire MP, but the Metropolitan police often recruit trained police officers from outside the Met area and bring them in. I do not think that that is great. I know there are some specialist roles that need to be done, particularly in relation to armed response and other areas, but actually officers should replicate the communities that they serve. I am determined that, throughout the ranks of the police forces in England and Wales, officers should replicate the communities that they serve and live in them. They do not now, and that is not something that has suddenly happened; it is something that we should have addressed years ago. How many chief constables are from a black and ethnic minority background? Very few are, so we must ensure that that happens.

The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee mentioned other duties that the police undertake. That is one of the things that I have been banging on about. I am sorry if she has not heard or has been sent to sleep by any of the speeches that I have made on that subject, but I know that the shadow Policing Minister has heard them. We now have an inter-ministerial group—it started under the coalition—so that we are stopping police officers doing something that they are fundamentally not trained to do, particularly in relation to mental health. I have been out on patrol with the police, like many colleagues here, and all too often when we say, “Where are we going?”, the reply is that we are going to see Mary or Johnny, and this is at 7 o’clock on a Friday night. “Why are we going to see Mary?” “Well, because social services phoned up and they haven’t seen her all week. She’s a very vulnerable lady, so we should go and see her.” No, we should not. It was because a phone call had come in earlier in the evening saying, “We haven’t seen her. Will you go and see her?” That is a social services responsibility. Of course we went, and of course the police would do that, but it is not the key role of the police.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The Minister might like to reflect on the fact that too often the police are the ones being called in because too many of these public services, such as social care and youth services, either are non-existent or have been cut back so far that there is no one to do that visit.

[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.