Deaths in Police Custody

Debate between Mike Penning and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, even though it is obviously enormously sad that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) has had to bring—quite rightly, in her opinion, and probably in mine—this case to Westminster Hall this afternoon.

Let me say at the outset that any death, whether or not in custody, is regrettable, and a death in custody is enormously regrettable. It must be enormously traumatic for the Burrell family, and I fully appreciate the hon. Lady’s concerns. However, I cannot agree with many of her comments, because I think that she has almost predetermined what will be in the report from the IPCC, which has not yet even been released. I know that you, Mrs Main, said that we had to be careful in talking about the ongoing case, which is going to go before the coroner’s court for the inquest. The IPCC report is not out yet. That is the independent—I stress, independent—report.

There are some areas where I do agree, so let us do the bits that I do not agree with first and then we can move on. I do not recognise, as a constituency MP, the view of the IPCC and police as being above the law. I have patrolled with the police for more than 20 years, in many different capacities, and one of the things that I have found is this. There are, clearly, bad people within the police and bad people within our community. It is our job to make sure that we get them out of the police; they should not have got there in the first place in many cases. But the vast majority of the police—I want to put this on the record—99.9% of the police in this country, do a fantastic job for us, keeping us safe, not just in this place but in our homes and our businesses throughout the country.

This is an enormously difficult subject. The hon. Lady used quite emotive language in her speech, and I partially understand why, but not fully. May I touch, before I make progress with some other things, on the question of deaths in custody of people from the black and ethnic minority community? When I first thought about deaths in custody, my first thought was that that meant people who were being held by police in custody cells, but that is not always what happens. It is important to put on record that a death in custody occurs where the police have come into contact with somebody, even briefly, who has subsequently died. The IPCC will immediately become involved in such cases. The cases are sometimes enormously complex, much more so than I understand, although I am not as close to the case as the hon. Lady is. The way in which the news is communicated to families and loved ones is critical, and that is something that I am interested in looking at. I will come on to the IPCC review in a moment.

I will return to the hon. Lady’s comments about deaths in custody, particularly regarding people from the black and ethnic minority community. The IPCC did a 10-year study on deaths in custody between 1989 and 2008-09, and it found that 22 of those who died during that period were black. The view expressed in the report, which is a public document, is that that was in line, sadly, with the ethnic make-up of the detainee population. In 2010-11, there were, overall, 20 deaths in custody, one of which was sadly of an individual from the black community. In 2013-14, there were a total of 11 deaths in custody; clearly that is still too many, but the number of deaths has nearly halved since 2011. One of those deaths was, in the terminology used by the report—I do not like this terminology—of a mixed-race detainee. I am only using the language that has been given to me by lawyers, and I apologise for it. I am not very politically correct myself.

To recap, in 2010-11, there were 20 deaths in custody; in 2011-12, there were 15; in 2012-13, there were also 15; and in 2013-14, there were 11. I think that the report of this debate will show that the hon. Lady spoke about “growing” deaths in custody, although I may not be using her exact words. I know that black and ethnic minority groups feel that the situation is disproportionate, but the evidence that has been presented to me does not support that view.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I would like to clarify that I said that there was growing concern about deaths in police custody. I was talking not about the number of deaths that occur, but about the over-representation of people with mental health issues and about how trust in the police is being eroded in BME communities.

[Mike Penning]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, and I will come on to talk about some work that I have been doing with a Minister in the Department of Health on mental illnesses. I repeat that the evidence shows that there were 20 deaths in custody in 2010-11—too many—one of which was of someone from the black community. Of the 15 people who died in 2011-12, one was a black individual and one was from a mixed-race family. In 2012-13, there were 15 deaths, one of which was of someone from a mixed-race family. In 2013-14, one of the 11 people who died was from a mixed-race family. The evidence speaks for itself. I understand how the situation is sometimes perceived, but it is our job as constituency MPs to ensure that our work is based on evidence rather than perception. It is the job of the police to do the same.

I am a new Minister in the Home Office, and I make the hon. Lady the same offer that my predecessor made: it would be good to meet outside the format of a debate to discuss the issues that she has raised. It is difficult for me to comment on the case, because the inquest will soon come before the coroner’s court and because the IPCC has not yet published its report.

There is no doubt that a review is needed into the IPCC’s work. That is not a criticism of the commission, but we need to look carefully at the nature of the work that comes before it. As a constituency MP, I regularly see cases where my constituents say, “I would like this case to go to the IPCC,” but I often look at the cases and think that they should have been resolved with the constabulary, rather than going to the IPCC. I am looking at guidance on that matter at the moment, and it will form part of the review of what the IPCC should look at. These cases are often complex, as is the case that the hon. Lady has raised. Before anything could happen, it was essential to ensure that any trial was not prejudiced, which is why the Crown Prosecution Service considered the matter before it progressed to an inquest. Of course, the IPCC now needs to report.

I do not believe that the previous Administration thought that the IPCC was flawed or broken and needed tearing up and throwing away, and I do not think that either. Is the IPCC perfect? No, it is not. Do we need to do some work with it? Yes, we do.

Without going into the details of the case that the hon. Lady has raised, there is one area that we need to work on, which has been the poor relation for many years. When I was a fireman in Essex, I used to go to road traffic collisions, which used to be called road traffic accidents. If someone was badly injured in an incident, we would extricate them as quickly as we could, the medics would do their job and the person would be taken to hospital for the treatment that they needed. The simple fact is that if someone has a mental illness, invariably the police will be called and the individual will end up in a cell rather than somewhere where they can get the medical help that they need. Is that the fault of the police? No, because their job is not to diagnose a mental illness but to make sure that the individual and the public are safe.

I was on patrol in Holborn only the other day when we received a call and went out. We thought that we would be dealing with a domestic incident, but the gentleman was having what his family described as an episode. The police did everything in their powers not to arrest him, but to take him to a hospital where he could get the correct treatment. I stress that the correct treatment is important. I have been working with the Department of Health to ensure that in such circumstances, people are not simply taken to an A and E department that does not have the required expertise, in which case they will be back out on the streets again five minutes later.

My view, and the view of the Health Minister with responsibility for the initiative, is that it is crucial that people with mental illnesses are treated as well as those with any other illnesses. People with mental health issues may also have learning difficulties and addictions to alcohol or drugs. The police still have a responsibility, however, not only to try to understand the circumstances of people who are brought before them, but to make sure that they can be taken to trained individuals with the right expertise. There are interesting projects going on at the moment. In Herefordshire, experts in the field such as nurses with mental health experience go out on patrol, particularly on Friday nights. It is important to have that sort of expertise alongside our patrolling police, and it provides a source of knowledge to ensure that the public feel safe.

I think that there is a real problem with the public, as well. The Olympics clearly showed us that public understanding of people with physical disabilities had really moved forward. The Paralympics was a great way of showing the world the wonderful things that people with long-term conditions and disabilities can do. However, all the evidence suggests that, although people with physical disabilities have seen such benefits, people with mental health issues and learning difficulties have not. We, as politicians, should do everything we can to tackle that.

I would love to have gone into a lot more detail, but with the ongoing investigations into the case, it would have been difficult for me to do so. I have every sympathy with the family. If I was the constituency MP, I would be sitting where the hon. Lady is sitting and asking exactly the sorts of questions that she has asked, but I always stand at the Dispatch Box—or, in this case, in this wonderful room. I just managed to get here in time, even though I went to the usual one first; it is a good job I always turn up early.

We are dealing with incredibly complicated issues, which will not be resolved in a half-hour debate. I look forward to meeting with the hon. Lady, and perhaps with the family, to see how we can move forward. Let us first see what we agree on, and then work on the other issues as we go forward.