Police

Richard Drax Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

May I begin by associating myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) about Paul McKeever? I had the pleasure—and it was a pleasure—of working with him when I was the shadow policing Minister, and he was a very effective representative of the federated ranks, and one of nature’s gentlemen. He represented many brave police officers—men and women—and we should never forget that in the context of funding settlements and reforms to pay and conditions. We honour and respect what police officers do each day on our behalf.

It is worth saying something about the headline figures for the police settlement that we are considering today. The Home Affairs Committee calculated that there was a real-terms increase of 20% in police funding in the decade up to 2008. That was something that the Conservative Opposition supported and voted for, and it had the result of making the British police force one of the best resourced in the western world. So when we look at reductions in spending—which we are doing in this settlement, as no one doubts—we have to see it in that context. It is coming off a very high base.

The figures for 2013-14 represent, in total central Government funding—that is specific Home Office grants, the police core settlement grant, the Department for Communities and Local Government revenue support grant and other bits of money—£7.8 billion, which is only a 1.9% reduction. These are not staggering figures, and I repeat that the reduction is against a backdrop of very high increases, which we supported, in the decade to 2008.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I pay tribute to Dorset police in my constituency for the wonderful work that they do. My hon. Friend was talking about the relatively small reduction, but Dorset is at the bottom of the heap and that small reduction over many years will actually be a massive reduction. If we had even the national police funding average per capita in Dorset, we would have an extra £16 million, which would mean an extra 50 officers on the beat. For us, even a small reduction has an enormous effect.

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. My local constabulary area of Suffolk is not dissimilar to Dorset. People who were on the police authority and senior serving officers have made exactly the point that he has just made, which is why I am delighted to draw attention to the fact that the Home Secretary has announced a clear intention to review the formula that churns out the grants for each authority. However, she wants to do that once police and crime commissioners are bedded in, so that they can be consulted on how the formula can be tweaked. I would certainly hope—like my hon. Friend—that rural forces such as Dorset and Suffolk will get a better deal and a greater acknowledgement of the particular challenges of a police service that covers very strung out areas. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is in her place, and I know that she endorses that point too.

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[Mr Ruffley]

I do not accept that simple, direct correlation, as I shall explain.

In the 12 months to September 2012—the latest period for which crime survey figures are reported—we have seen an 8% decrease in overall crime against adults in England and Wales. We also have figures in that survey that show that since 1981 the lowest chance of being a victim of crime was in the 12 months up to that date. It should be a truth universally acknowledged that the effectiveness of a police force does not directly depend on the number of staff, but rather the way in which they are deployed.

We have already heard that the Home Secretary has scrapped central targets and energised the drive by chief constables to reduce unnecessary process—not just fewer forms, but a change in the way officers do things. There have been some encouraging examples of what the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)— I see him in his place—and I looked at: the so-called four-force pilot of a much quicker and sharper incident reporting regime by officers on the beat. We have seen a rolling back of statutory charging in respect of more triable either-way offences, giving more discretion to the charging sergeant in the station so that he or she does not have to hang around on the telephone or wait for a Crown Prosecution Service solicitor to fetch up to give the charging authorisation. There are other examples, but we know that as a result of this crackdown on bureaucracy, memorably reported on by Sir Ronnie Flanagan in the second half of the last Parliament, progress is being made. The results are already there for us to see.

The number of police officers in front-line roles is projected to increase by 2% between March 2012 and March 2013. The proportion of officers in front-line roles is expected to increase from the 83% we inherited in 2010 to 89% in 2015. I found another statistic through research. According to Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—fairly objective data there, I feel—in March 2010, 17% of officers were in non-front-line roles, while the Government are forecasting that their announced policy measures could bring this down to 10% by March 2015.

[Richard Drax]

From my experience in the armed services, I know that the so-called backroom boys and girls who were members of the armed services in my day were very useful to call upon in times of trouble. While I quite accept that backroom boys and girls should be reduced to a certain degree, getting rid of all serving officers in those roles would mean that there is no reserve when, dare I say it, the proverbial hits the fan.

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, but we should resist the temptation to believe that a Home Secretary or a policing Minister in Whitehall can make decisions about the mix between uniformed back staff, who would be able to perform at short notice the kind of reserve and back-up on the front line that my hon. Friend describes, and pure civilians. This has been a long-running debate in the world of police reform, but we know that it is for the chief constable to decide and to make dispositions accordingly. Whether or not my hon. Friend accepts that, any Government would have to have in mind reducing the number of the uniformed work force in non-front-line activity.

Let me repeat the statistic. According to HMIC, in March 2010 17% of uniformed officers were in non-front-line roles. It is our intention that measures put in place to reduce that will mean that only one in 10 of uniformed officers are in non-front-line roles. I would have thought that the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. Member for Delyn, who I thought was a worthy and dedicated policing Minister in the last Parliament, acknowledged that that should be a policy objective of Governments, chief constables and police commissioners.

I want to talk not just about reducing bureaucracy as part of police reform, but about getting more bang for our buck by doing more with less. That relates to what are undoubtedly difficult and controversial reforms to pay and conditions—the Winsor reforms. I remind the House that when we talk about funding settlements for the whole of the police service, a massive 80% of expenditure for most police forces in England and Wales goes on pay. Yes, we can mandate collaboration, which this Government are in the process of doing to make efficiencies in procurement, information technology, uniform, traffic and so on. But those and other heads of spending amount only to 20% of what a police force spends; 80% is spent on people. It therefore seems to me that it is incumbent on any Home Secretary, whether Labour or Conservative, to look afresh at how we can get a modernised pay system, crucially linking pay progression—the former Government indicated that they supported this concept—with higher levels of skills and with those who have undertaken higher professional training. This is not performance by results, but linking pay to the skills that officers have, paying less attention to progress up the pay ladder simply as a result of age.

The Winsor proposals are, of course, more complicated than that. Chief constables will have flexibility—and it is they, not Ministers in Whitehall, who will make these managerial decisions—and this will be done in conjunction with the locally elected police and crime commissioners. It will be for them to ensure they have the proper mix of ability within the uniformed ranks and they will also have to make decisions about civilianisation in regard to the allocations laid before the House today for each police force area, and make that money go further.

I close by saying something about accountability. This money will be voted for by Government Members, and I think the right hon. Member for Delyn suggested that the Opposition will vote against it. We must get away from the idea that Ministers will be held personally accountable. We vote for the money, and I want the message to go out that police and crime commissioners will have the prime job of driving through change to get more value for that money.

I know it is early days, but my experience so far of the elected commissioner in Suffolk, Councillor Tim Passmore, has been positive. He has put together a draft set of priorities; he has gone to the trouble of speaking to and meeting all the Suffolk MPs; and he has taken amendments to his first draft. My own view—I think most police and crime commissioners should look at this—is that a target should be set for the percentage of time that officers are visible to the Suffolk public. I think, too, that an objective should be set to move towards the 10% of uniformed officers—and it is only 10%—who should be on non-front-line activities, which as I outlined is the national objective, by March 2015. These commissioners should hold themselves to account by explaining—in my case, to the taxpayers of Suffolk, but to others in police force areas up and down the country—what they are doing to reduce bureaucracy, to get a higher percentage of officers on the front line and to ensure not only that there are more of them on the front line, but that during their shifts they spend a higher proportion of their time visibly out and about so that the public can see them.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley). He speaks with enormous knowledge about policing issues, and, as one who has attended many debates on the police grant —both in opposition and supporting the Government—he has always come to the Chamber with good and fresh ideas. It is a mystery to me why he is not in the Home Office doing the job, because he knows so much about it.

I must say that I was a little disappointed by the Minister’s opening remarks. I like the Minister, who has appeared before the Home Affairs Committee and who is always very robust, but in a debate of this kind there is no need for knockabout stuff, because we are dealing with extremely serious issues. I am still a bit puzzled about why the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice was not here to open the debate. He may have other important business to deal with, but I should have thought that he would be able to open a debate of this kind, as he has done in the past. Obviously a deal has been done on the Front Bench, however, and we are happy to hear the Government’s view.

I, too, was present at the memorial service for Paul McKeever, and, like the shadow policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds, I want to express my appreciation for a life that was dedicated to public service. He was the policeman’s policeman. Hundreds of people turned up at Southwark cathedral on Saturday, including the Home Secretary—who read the lesson very eloquently—the shadow Home Secretary, the policing Minister, the shadow policing Minister, and the entire hierarchy of the police service. That was because Paul McKeever was very special as an advocate of what the service does throughout Britain. I think it right for us to start our debates by paying tribute to the work of the police force in this country.

Let me now make some remarks about the new landscape of policing, and about the reduction in the overall police grant and how it will affect some of the important institutions that the Government have created.

Let me say first that I am a great fan of what the Home Secretary is doing in reforming the landscape of policing. I am attached not to particular organisations, but to the services that are provided for local people. However, as we approach the halfway point in those changes in the landscape, I am not entirely convinced that at the end of the day we shall meet the Home Secretary’s original objective. When she started the process in 2010, her aim was to unclutter the policing landscape, but I think that we may well end up with more organisations rather than fewer.

Secondly, I should like to know what is happening to all this money. Of course there cannot be an immediate transfer from one organisation to another. However, the Home Affairs Committee has been studying the matter for the last two years, and in the course of our latest inquiry, into leadership and standards in the police, we have been looking at the organisations that are being abolished or reformed and the new organisations that are being created. I am afraid that the sums do not add up.

Evidence was given to the Committee by the former policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). When I asked him what the budget of the new National Crime Agency would be, the Home Office director of finance was sitting next to him, and he did not know what it would be. We do know that the combined budgets of the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Serious Organised Crime Agency amount to about £860 million. We also know that the budget of the National Crime Agency will be about £400 million. Yesterday, in his assured evidence to the Committee, Alex Marshall said he would have a budget of £50 million and a staff of 600.

I am not very good at maths. I will not reveal my GCSE grade to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I am sure that you did better than I did. However, I think that we are about £315 million short. We are not talking about a few bob here and there; we are talking about a lot of money, and in the context of the overall reduction in the police grant over a number of years, it is really serious money. I am not trying to put the Under-Secretary of State on the spot—I do not know whether he will be winding up the debate—but it would be great if those sums could be confirmed, either today or in writing to me or to the Committee.

[Richard Drax]

Is not one of the downsides of all these budget cuts, particularly in constituencies such as Dorset, which contains vast rural areas, the temptation to bring all the officers in from the rural areas and to close local police stations? I think that there is a loss of confidence, not in what the police are doing but in their ability to do it, because there is no one out there.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Because of his profession, he knows about these issues. I am sure he is an assiduous Member who works tirelessly on behalf of his constituents. One of the public’s first concerns is whether they can see their local police officer—the bobby on the beat—walking around, and whether they can go to the local police station and report crimes and feel safe as a result. Not all of us can have a Dr Who-type TARDIS—I certainly do not—but it is important that we give that visibility in respect of both the physical building and police officers.

Where responsibility for counter-terrorism will lie is not yet settled. The Government are ring-fencing its £563 million budget, and I support that, but there is to be a new landscape of policing, and a decision needs to be made soon as to whether it will stay with the Metropolitan police or move to the National Crime Agency. My distinguished colleague from the Home Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), will correct me if I am wrong, but I think we recommended in one of our reports that it should go to the National Crime Agency, as counter-terrorism is a national issue.