Police

Richard Drax Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that I do not know the details of the issue he raises. What I do know is that, as I go up and down the country—on 50 occasions, arising out of the Stevens report—the message I get from police officers, communities and partnership agencies is that they value what the Labour Government built. That is coming under increasing pressure as a consequence of what this Government are doing.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

However we term policing on the beat—as neighbourhood policing, or anything else—as a former soldier I know that being on the ground is the most effective form of gathering intelligence. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is what people want: police officers on the ground 24 hours a day where they can be seen?

[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree. It is the most effective form of local policing in terms of detection of crime and diverting people from crime. It is also key to the detection of very serious wrongdoing. For example, in the city I am proud to represent, Birmingham, there has been a large number of terrorist crime convictions. Some involved hi-tech monitoring, but in most cases the detection of wrongdoers came about through good neighbourhood policing and the development of local relationships; in this case, predominantly with the Muslim community. As a consequence of that co-operation, those guilty of the threat or actual commission of terrorist crime were brought to book. Whether it is a local burglary or a terrorist crime that threatens our community, there is no substitute for the local policing that the hon. Gentleman rightly identifies.

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[Keith Vaz]

It is not possible to listen and talk at the same time, distinguished though the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare is. Perhaps they are talking about his promotion, and I congratulate him on his re-promotion to the Front Bench. We will miss him on the Administration Committee and in all the important work we have to do there.

Let me give a couple of quotes. Tony Lloyd, a police and crime commissioner, has said that the police are

“on the edge of a cliff”

after £100 million of cuts. Sir Peter Fahy, a distinguished chief constable, who is not elected, has said that 700 police posts will go, reducing his force to 6,400 officers. I have a rather remarkable quote from the chief constable of South Yorkshire, David Crompton, who said:

“Contrary to popular opinion the force doesn’t deal with crime for the majority of time—less than a quarter of what we deal with is crime…while we are spending time on these things we can’t spend as much time as we might want to on crime.”

What do the officers of South Yorkshire spend 75% of their time on? We need to know that. Chief constables are concerned about these reductions and we need to listen to what they say.

The Minister and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds referred to the reduction in crime, which I welcome. It is a good thing when crime goes down, but I am worried about what has been unearthed by the Public Administration Committee, which is the concern expressed by a number of its witnesses that crime statistics are not as accurate as they should be. That is something that Ministers should look at.

[Richard Drax]

I welcome the fact that crime is falling statistically, but I hear—certainly in my constituency—that many people are not reporting it, in many cases not because the police do not do a good job but because those who have experienced crime feel that action will not be taken.

[Keith Vaz]

That is a serious issue. People may feel that they cannot access police officers in the way they have done, so they do not report crime. We need to consider this issue when we look at the crime reduction figures. We should be encouraging our constituents to report those crimes, enabling the police to log them and explain what happens to them.

I hope that there is enough in the budget for new technology. I know that this is a feature of what the Minister is hoping to do: better collaboration, making sure that there are economies of scale. When the Select Committee considered procurement two years ago, it felt that the Home Office should produce a catalogue of best deals for local police forces. We named it after the previous permanent secretary and called it the Ghosh list, but she left shortly after, so we decided to name it the Sedwill list, after the current permanent secretary. There are no plans for him to leave. It is important that the Home Office looks at procurement issues. Only this week, the Select Committee visited the Metropolitan police firearms unit. We were all encouraged to take up firearms and shoot at targets to see how difficult it was for officers. I am afraid that it was more Austin Powers than James Bond for the Committee, but it gave us a flavour of what officers have to go through. One point made by the assistant commissioner, Mark Rowley, was his desire and that of the commissioner to have police officers wear cameras.

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[Dr Huppert]

Even in that intervention, the hon. Gentleman very carefully avoided saying where he would get the extra money. I think that we would all love to have more money to spend on policing, and, indeed, on almost everything that a Government do; the problem is where that money is to come from.

The hon. Gentleman also missed an opportunity to intervene earlier—this is relevant to the point that he raised just now—in order to congratulate Cambridgeshire constabulary, which in 2012-13 recruited 72 constables and 13 officers who transferred themselves to the area. I have not scaled up that number to cover the whole country, but it shows what can be achieved. I feel no need to apologise to the people of Cambridgeshire for the fact that we have been recruiting those extra police, and have been able to protect the front line in the county. The hon. Gentleman is welcome to intervene again to give a clearer view of what he would cut in order to raise the extra money, but if he does not wish to do so, I shall move on to the more substantive aspects of the debate.

Let me begin by paying a tribute, which I think all Members would echo, to the work done by the vast majority of the police. They do a fantastic job day in, day out. Some times are easier than others, but most times are quite tough for police officers. It is a very hard job and it makes a big difference to people’s lives, whether it involves directly combating crime and catching criminals, or the much broader role that police officers play. I have always welcomed community policing, although I must say that I was slightly concerned when, back in the days when I was a councillor, one of the best community beat officers in my constituency, who had managed to halve the crime level in a single year, was given a reprimand for not arresting enough people. I think that that was target-driven rather than being particularly sensible.

As I have said, the police in general do a fantastic job, and they feel let down by the few officers who behave badly. A number of officers have spoken to me directly about some of the issues that we explored in the Select Committee, such as Plebgate, and have told me that they are ashamed to wear the same uniform as some of those involved. Those officers deserve better. According to recent reports, in the last few years there have been more than 2,000 cases of officers and staff breaching data protection rules, in some instances by looking at the police national computer. Those officers constitute only a small fraction of the total force, and like most police officers, I wish that they would behave much better.

We are lucky in this country to have such good policing, and to have a core of policing by consent. I hope that that continues, because I am not at all keen on the idea of increasing militarisation in the police. For that reason I am concerned about Tasers, although they are a subject for another debate. Policing by consent—the sort of policing that we have here—is not just about throwing money at problems, and it is not just about passing more and more laws to make more and more actions criminal offences; it is about giving communities a say, and working closely with them. We need the police to work as part of the community, and for the community.

[Richard Drax]

The hon. Gentleman has just mentioned Tasers, and said that they were a subject for a debate on another day. I wonder whether he has ever faced two or three completely drunk hooligans at three o’clock in the morning with no more protection than a protective vest.

[Dr Huppert]

As it happens, I had very similar experiences when I was an ambulance technician with St John Ambulance. One of the things we did in order to increase our safety was try to make it clear that we were not playing any form of quasi-militaristic role, and that the role that we were playing was much more relaxed. I worry about the message that is sent to people who see something that looks like a firearm and is used like a firearm. I agree that there is a place for Tasers as a less lethal option, but I do not think that they should be rolled out for basic use. That is a subject for another debate, however.

The police work very well. The establishment of the College of Policing is one of the best things that the Government have done in this area. It will make it much easier for policing to become a more established profession and for the police to work with a proper evidence base and a more effective way of sharing and developing information. That will follow on from the work that is already being done to reduce crime despite tight budgets.

When times are tough, it is even more important to do things that actually work to reduce crime and the fear of crime, rather than things that merely work anecdotally. A huge amount of research has been done in this area, and I pay tribute to the work of Professor Larry Sherman at the institute of criminology at Cambridge university. He is a member of the board of the College of Policing, and he has done a great deal of work on what actually makes a difference in reducing crime. How we place police officers and how we move them around a city can make a difference, for example. He has also produced proposals relating to crime harm indices. Where his proposals have been tried, they have been very effective in reducing crime. That is the sort of lesson that the college should be developing and that we should all be trying to follow.

We should also look at other ways of reducing crime. Providing more support to people serving very short sentences is a really good thing, for example. We know that some people reoffend repeatedly, and it is more efficient to invest in reducing their reoffending than to invest in catching them and dealing with them afterwards. I am also pleased to see a drive towards the use of more technology. It is far more helpful to get police officers to go out and do their job, as they want to do, rather than fighting technological problems. The police are far happier when that happens. I have spent time with a police officer, and I will never forget that it took more than an hour to download a video from a shoulder-mounted camera because of technological problems. That was an hour that could have been much better spent.

We should also give the police much more flexibility to innovate. An example is a scheme in my constituency known as “lights instead of tickets”. Cyclists who cycle without lights are given seven days to buy lights to avoid paying a fine. That has led to a huge number of people acquiring lights, which is far better than a huge number of people paying a fine and continuing to cycle without lights.

We can also ensure that money is spent more usefully by focusing on the more serious crimes. I will not go into detail, but the Deputy Prime Minister has suggested certain reforms of our drugs policy. The Home Affairs Select Committee has also found that we could do as Portugal has done, in transferring effort and money from the police and criminal justice system to the health service to help to reduce addiction. Similarly, we could reduce the stop and search that does not lead to arrests. That would save police time and free up the police to get on with other things.

Perhaps the Minister could give us an update on the reforms of stop and search. Such reforms are important because they relate to trust in the police. Certain communities start to lose trust in the police because of stop and search and, in my view, because of increasing Taser use. That lack of community interaction is a problem. It leads to distrust and makes it harder for the police to find out what is happening. It makes people work against the police rather than with them.

We could also do much more to help the police by sharing information, although that must obviously be done carefully. The Select Committee has recommended asking hospitals to share non-confidential information—about numbers of incidents, for example—with the police more often. There have been some good pilot models of that, but they do not happen often enough. The public could also have more information. The data available from police.uk is helpful, but we could go further in that regard. Indeed, Professor Sherman has some ideas on how to engage communities and give them real information about what is going on. Such data also need to include hate crime, which should not be considered separately from the main national crime statistics.

The whole information drive is important, but we do not always use the most up-to-date information. I hope that the Minister will comment on this. I note that some of the figures in the report on the police grant have used the 2001 census data. I represent a county that is growing rapidly, and I hope that we can move to using more modern censuses, because we are already facing issues based on the present population, not the one we had in 2001.

The subject of saving money has been discussed at length. I am pleased that the proposed expenditure of £1.8 billion on the communications data Bill will now be available for other policing. When I asked the Met commissioner how he would use that amount of money over 10 years, he said that he would use it to get more neighbourhood policing, more technology and more training. I am pleased that we are able to do that, rather than spending it on the original proposals.

The finances are tight. We would all love to have more money available to spend on absolutely everything, but it is a great tribute to the police that despite times being tough, crime continues to fall. I hope that that will continue for a very long time to come and that we will see more effective use of our wonderful police.

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[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). My tone will be as balanced as hers and that of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who made a very thoughtful speech, as he always does.

The Minister, who has kindly sat through all the speeches, has heard me speak before about the issue I am going to raise. I hope he does not raise his eyebrows to the roof and say, “Oh dear, here comes Drax again”, but I am afraid I am going to raise it anyway because my job is to stand up for my constituents and for my police force in Dorset, which does an outstanding job. I pay credit to the outgoing chief constable, Martin Baker, who has been replaced by an another outstanding chief constable, Debbie Simpson. They have both galvanised Dorset police. They have collaborated and they have saved: they have done everything they could in the years before this spending review came in and since. We are now down to the bone. I will be parochial in the sense that I will focus my comments on Dorset police and not the police nationally.

I am grateful to our new police and crime commissioner, Martyn Underhill, for a lot of the information that I am going to give—I say “a lot”, but it is not that much and I will not take long—and I concur with his views and concerns. First, it is only fair that I praise the brave men and women of Dorset police; everyone who has spoken has done likewise. We cannot overestimate the courage that these men and women continually show to keep us safe on the streets and at home. While we are all tucked up in bed, many of them are out patrolling the streets at night and tackling some pretty ferocious people while armed with not much more than a protective jacket and occasionally with a Taser if needed.

The comprehensive spending review indicated or demanded savings of 20%. As we have heard, savings across all forces in 2014-15 will be 3.3%. For Dorset, that means a loss of £3.1 million. As has also been mentioned, taking into account the top-slicing in such areas as the police innovation fund and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Dorset must make savings of 4.8%, which equates to well over £4 million. The point for the Minister is that that will once again place Dorset at the bottom of the pile. I simply cannot repeat it enough. I shall say it again—at the bottom of the pile.

Last year, the formula funding per head in Dorset was the lowest in the land. The needs-based funding formula for policing, which is supposed to determine how much each area receives, has never been properly implemented. Since 2010, Dorset police has been short-changed to the tune of £11 million. In real terms, the figure is a lot more. Last year, Dorset lost more officers and staff in proportion to other forces across the country—a full 6%. During the entire period of the CSR, Dorset will have lost 400 posts.

Whenever I mention or hear the dreadful word “damping”, I cannot help thinking of that awful thing that creeps up from the floor, ruins the walls and costs people a fortune in redecorating their house, but that is the technical jargon. Under damping, each force faces the same reduction in core Government funding in 2014-15, which will exacerbate the inequities that already exist in Dorset.

Let me say to the Minister—if he will stop talking to his Whips—that this situation in Dorset simply cannot go on for ever. Because of its size, topography and population centres, Dorset faces unique police challenges. The county is almost evenly split, with one half living in a large conurbation, and the other half scattered across rural communities. The two halves require substantially different forms of policing. In addition, we have tourism and the night-time economy. I know that many other constituencies have them too, but I am proud to say that Dorset is one of the most beautiful counties in the country. We attract 14 million tourists every year. The thriving night-time economy has grown, as it has in so many other parts of the country, and it requires a significant police presence all year round. One would have thought that those two aspects would be included in a common-sense funding formula, but they are not.

I was a journalist at the BBC in Dorset for some 10 years and I have spoken—often off the record—to the police wearing a different hat. From talking to officers on a busy Friday night, I know that they are very thin on the ground. There is no doubt about that. Although crime is down, which I of course welcome, the reality away from this place—we are sitting very comfortably on green Benches—is that brave men and women are out there at 3 o’clock in the morning facing the thousands of people, who are often out of control and drunk, coming out of nightclubs and bars. There are very few officers to tackle those thousands of people.

Over the years, I have been told that because there are so few police officers, they dare not get too involved in many incidents, as that would require two or three officers to go back to the cells, and they simply cannot afford to reduce their numbers on the ground. The logical conclusion is that a situation must get very bad before the police will physically intervene, because they do not have the numbers to deal with it. That is not their fault; in such situations, they simply do not have the numbers on the ground.

The formula originally evolved on the basis of a reasonably even level of council tax across the counties and parity in the policing that was delivered. It no longer works. It is perhaps blindingly obvious that a formula that gives one force 80% of its money from central Government and others, such as Dorset, less than half does not stand up to scrutiny.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I apologise for joining the debate late, Madam Deputy Speaker.

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the effect of the manning formula in places such as our constituencies in Dorset. Does he agree that the manning formula needs to be reconsidered to take account of the number of visitors who come to a place? Bournemouth swells by 15,000 or 20,000 people on a Friday night. That is not taken into consideration, and it places excess pressure on the limited number of police.

[Richard Drax]

I concur entirely with my hon. Friend. Because there is a demand for more officers at busy times, such as weekends, those officers are not available on other days of the week. Although there is less crime during the day and in the week, it is equally important that police officers are seen at those times.

Council tax can no longer be increased to pay for grant shortfalls. The recent changes by the Department for Communities and Local Government capped increases at 2%. Due to the shortfall in moneys from central Government, Dorset police has set its precept at 1.96% for 2014-15. Surveys of the public show that they generally support that. Mr Underhill and the chief constable are trying to maintain a balance between sustaining a viable police force and not overburdening the taxpayer. The rise will cover essential expenditure, including on 16 extra police officers, seven rural community vehicles, 300 body-worn cameras and a campaign to make people more aware of cybercrime.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East mentioned technology. Although everyone in this House recognises the value of technology, I have some advice for the Minister. I have many friends in the armed services who went to Iraq. There was a huge reliance on the technology that we and the Americans had, but there was no intelligence from people on the ground or “human int.”, as it is called. The result is there for all to see. The west did not understand what was happening on the ground or the consequences of invading a country such as Iraq.

I am sure that there is no intention to invade Dorset, but I draw the comparison because human int. is the key to a successful police force and, more importantly, to tackling crime. Nothing beats seeing police officers on the ground in our constituencies. It happens too rarely, but through no fault of the officers. In the Army, we patrolled around Northern Ireland in groups of 12, day and night. Like police officers, my soldiers brought back valuable information about what they had seen or heard and about what the local hoods were doing, who they were with, what pubs they were visiting and whether they were happy or sad. Such information is crucial in everyday policing.

Unlike the rest of local government, which received a two-year settlement, the police have a provisional finance settlement only for 2014-15. We thought that that would be the last year of savings. I am concerned that they are now likely to continue until 2017-18. It is estimated that Dorset will have to make savings of 3.7% in 2015-16 and 3.5% in each of the following two years, so annual funding will fall from £114.3 million last year to £108.7 million in 2017-18.

The future is bleak in Dorset. I do not like to be negative because I am an optimist. Dorset police is doing everything that it can, but we have been at the bottom of the pile for a long time and the funding formula is grossly unfair to us. Dorset police has identified potentially serious funding problems in 2016-17. Mr Underhill arrived in post and immediately had to face savings of £10 million. He described Dorset police as

“already stripped to the bone.”

Crime figures have fallen nationally and I welcome that—we all do—but calls for assistance and the number of incidents have risen. Despite those pressures, Dorset police has still earned one of the highest levels of public confidence of any police force in the country. But, Minister, enough is enough. For too long, Dorset police has been expected to do more with less. Dorset residents pay the same as, or more than, everyone else in the country, yet they are rewarded with gratuitously low levels of funding for their police. It is to the force’s enduring credit that they have managed so well for so long on so little.

I do not necessarily like speaking so bluntly to the Minister, and certainly not from the Government Benches, but I feel that I have no choice because the situation is so concerning. Dorset police has done all it can, and it continues to look at every possible avenue to provide a better service and better value for money. I agree, in part, with the phrase “value for money”, but if that comes at the cost of losing what I and my constituents want, which is to see police officers on the beat doing the job we want them to do, perhaps value for money should be looked at in a different way. Finally, I ask the Minister to rectify our situation now, before it is too late.