Metropolitan Police Service

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for her question. As she will know, we are in the middle of an inquiry by Dame Elish Angiolini into the first stage of the employment of Wayne Couzens and then more widely into the culture of the Met. Once we have seen that and digested the urgent work required to correct the situations we see presented in this report, we will have to consider what if any further measures may need to be taken to ensure that, as the right hon. Lady says, not only national but international confidence in the Metropolitan Police as our lead force is maintained.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the thousands of police officers who do a great job in providing service to Londoners, but they need robust and focused leadership, and I think it is clear that we are still in need of that. We are now on our third commissioner in six years, soon to be fourth, but we have had the same Mayor of London and the same deputy mayor for the past six years. Does my right hon. Friend think that there should be more political accountability and that perhaps one of those two characters should think about their role moving forward?

[Kit Malthouse]

The creation of police and crime commissioners was designed to provide a focused point of accountability for the electorate. They replaced police authorities, which were opaque organisations in which no one person could be held responsible at the ballot box. As I said, if I had been in that job—I had the privilege of holding the post of deputy mayor for policing for four years—and I had had it for six years when this situation occurred, I would consider my position.

IOPC Report on Metropolitan Police Officers' Conduct: Charing Cross Police Station

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Words cannot really cover how I felt when I read the IOPC report; that anybody could think that using such language is acceptable, let alone police officers—and police officers based in my constituency, in a police station just up the road. I will be meeting the borough commander for Westminster tomorrow to discuss the report and how he and his colleagues plan to bring its recommendations to pass. I also welcome the review by Dame Louise Casey; I have worked with her for many years and I know she will leave no stone unturned when it comes to looking at the culture of the Metropolitan Police.

Does my right hon. Friend agree, however, that although it is clear there are rogue police officers in the Metropolitan Police and other police services, there are thousands and thousands of dedicated and hardworking police officers up and down the country who are equally disgusted? Will he join me in thanking them for their service?

[Kit Malthouse]

I share my hon. Friend’s disgust at these events. As a former Westminster councillor and the London Assembly member for the area that includes Charing Cross police station, and having visited the police station to see its work in policing one of the most diverse, sensitive and difficult parts of the country and the capital, I find it shocking to see such evidence. I agree that that disgust and fury will be shared by the thousands of police officers across the United Kingdom who do extraordinary things every day to keep us safe. It will be shared not least, given the nature of the messages, by the ever increasing numbers of female and black and minority ethnic officers—the numbers in UK policing are now at an all-time high in both categories—who are doing their best to help us all in changing the face of British policing.

Ten-Year Drugs Strategy

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Kit Malthouse

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am afraid that the devolution of justice in Wales would not achieve the right hon. Lady’s suggested objectives, not least because the drug supply lines into Wales run from forces in England—from Liverpool, the west midlands and London. A co-ordinated approach to the problem is required from a policing point of view, making sure that we enforce consistently across the country where we can. My view is that enforcement in Scotland, for example, is held back by that lack of co-ordination. We would like to try to improve it. We need to work more closely together, but we cannot pretend that this problem affects the home nations separately. We must work together.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s 10-year strategy to fight the evil that is the drugs industry. I particularly welcome the emphasis on holding professional classes to account for their actions. They may want to buy their Fairtrade coffee and go to the farmers’ market to buy organic food, but perhaps they should spend more time thinking about the cocaine that they buy for their weekend parties, because that fuels county lines, which is possibly the worst grooming and safeguarding concern for our young people. Does he agree that we must treat the drug barons involved in county lines as predators who are using and grooming children? Perhaps we should look to put them on the sex offenders’ register and ensure that they are held to account for their crimes against children.

[Kit Malthouse]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. She represents what is sadly one of the drug epicentres of the country in central London, and she is right that much of the drug abuse, violence and degradation is driven by casual, thoughtless use by people who do not regard themselves as addicted but who are nevertheless complicit in the violence. In spring next year, we hope to publish a White Paper with a structure of escalating impositions on such individuals, which means that we will be as likely to see a drugs operation outside Lancaster Gate or Bayswater tube station or in Belgravia as in other parts of the capital to ensure that we get among those people. She is right that we must focus very much on those drug barons and put them behind bars if we possibly can.

Policing (England and Wales)

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Kit Malthouse

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The best thing I can do is encourage them, once again, to elect a Conservative police and crime commissioner in May who will be focused on their priorities. I am pleased to note that, in the past couple of weeks, Lincolnshire police’s inspection report has significantly improved, which I gather was the cause of some celebration in the Lincolnshire media. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), was trumpeting the triumph of her local police force.

We will be supporting Lincolnshire police in all its work, and it has made a special grant application that we will be considering in due course. I recognise that a county like Lincolnshire, which is very large and sparsely populated, faces particular challenges that we will want to address.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, with this extra funding for the Metropolitan police, it is time that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan—who is responsible for policing in London—revisited his list of police station closures, including the important Belgravia police station in the Westminster part of my constituency?

[Kit Malthouse]

I know Belgravia police station very well indeed—[Laughter.] It was not through having spent any overnight stays there. During my time in policing in London, I visited it on a couple of occasions. The Met will be in receipt of a further 1,369 police officers, who will need to be accommodated somewhere. As I have said in the media in the past, perhaps to some hilarity, their lockers will need to go somewhere, and an expansion of the size that London will see over the next few years means that a general review of the property strategy is sensible.

Policing and Crime

Debate between Nickie Aiken and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As would be expected, I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He has identified a trend that I have detected, which is returning to policing after an absence of some six years. The policing family in its widest sense has drifted towards an obsession with process rather than product. For example, in the six months for which I have been the policing Minister I have been invited to conferences on computers and human resources, but I have yet to be invited to a conference on crime and how we fight it. We will therefore be holding such a conference in March. We will invite police and crime commissioners to come and talk about crime-fighting policy, and I hope that many of the best of them will do so.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that it is important for the Mayor of London in particular to trust local authorities to be able to fight crime and the causes of crime in their own areas? What concerns me is that the money that comes from violence reduction units comes with too many conditions. Local authorities such as mine, Westminster City Council, know their young people. They know their estates and their streets. I urge the Minister to ensure that the Mayor of London, and police and crime commissioners, trust their local authorities an awful lot more with their funding.

[Kit Malthouse]

There speaks the voice of experience. It is great to see a former leader of Westminster City Council, and a successor in my council ward, in this place. She is quite right: that was something that we recognised, certainly when I was at City Hall, in our joint engagement meetings, when we put every single local authority in London alongside every single borough commander and anyone else in the borough who wanted to fight crime, and talked about our common problems and our shared solutions, bearing in mind that no one organisation or geography has a monopoly on wisdom and that very often local authorities are closer to the problem than the police can be.