Retail Crime Prevention

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend has put an important issue on the table for the Minister to respond to.

In June, 50 senior retail figures, chief executives of the UK’s most recognisable retailers, the general secretary of USDAW, the chief executive of the Charity Retail Association and the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium all signed a letter calling for legislation in response to the Government consultation. Can we hear about the consultation and the potential legislation, and about what the Government intend to do, so that we can make a judgment about that? Whoever wins this election—that is for the British people—we need to know what measures are in place to take this issue forward.

I met with the Charity Retail Association—not just retail shops as a whole—which wrote to me on 5 June:

“We look forward to joining your list of…organisations in your fight for better protection for shop workers from violence or abuse.”

I wrote to the Minister earlier this year on the consultation that he is now considering. He responded on 3 September:

“Early analysis suggests that, as you highlight in your letter, the vast majority of respondents believe that violence and abuse toward shop staff has increased in recent years and that many respondents are unaware of the measures and tools available to tackle it and provide support for victims.”

My challenge to the Minister is this. Given that those respondents believe violence and abuse has gone up, and they want to see action from the Government, what will the Government do?

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing such an excellent debate. Having worked for USDAW for nearly 20 years, I have spoken to thousands of shop workers who have suffered abuse. They often felt that their employer was not doing enough to be on the side of their staff who were facing abuse. That has happened over decades. Does he agree that the Government should take a lead on this and make it clear that it is never right to abuse or threaten staff on the frontline?

[David Hanson]

I absolutely agree, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s efforts in this area. It is right that the Government should do that. I am looking to the Minister to show political leadership on this. For example, 98% of the current police and crime commissioners’ policing plans make no reference to shop theft, 63% make no reference to business crime, 72% make no reference to prolific offending and 79% make no reference to addiction, drug treatment or drug recovery, which are key to preventing shop theft. What pressure will the Minister put on police and crime commissioners for their actions?

The Minister will probably have received a letter today, dated 1 November, from James Lowman, chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores, supporting the broad thrust of this debate and the consultation, and asking for legislation. The key point from Mr Lowman’s letter that I want to put on the record is this. Since the Government’s consultation began—back through the autumn, summer and spring, to when it was launched—200,000 assaults have taken place on people working in the retail and wholesale sector, in their place of work, because of the issues that we have mentioned around shoplifting and shop theft, and the lack of prevention of those activities.

Mr Lowman makes the valid point that his organisation represents 33,500 shops, including the Co-op, BP petrol stations, Spar, Nisa and Londis—a whole range of shops. They are united in their wish for a Government to take action on this issue and introduce legislation on shop theft and attacks on shop staff. I hope the Minister will give some indication on that in due course.

I also want to raise the issue of shoplifting as a whole. In the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, the definition of shop theft was revisited. At the time, I was the shadow Police Minister. I objected to that change and we pressed the matter to a Division. “Stolen goods from shops” was defined as goods worth £200 or less, which meant that such cases would therefore not necessarily go to court. That has had a dramatic impact on shop theft. Someone could walk into a supermarket today and steal £199-worth of goods and potentially not face court, but instead face an out-of-court disposal. I happen to think that it is important that people go to court and face the consequences of their crime. We need to review the threshold.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and her colleagues will be in the Minister’s position shortly. After this election, whoever the Minister is, they should review the £200 limit on shoplifting. It is causing, potentially, increased shoplifting, because people know there are few consequences to face, and the police do not follow up on that type of activity, because of their stretched resources—which is something we might come to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) for introducing this important debate. Even on the last day of this Parliament, it is important that both sides of the House look at the position of shop workers in the run-up to Christmas, because crime and violence against them has got worse.

I pay tribute to USDAW, having worked on its Freedom from Fear campaign for many years, and having been instrumental in setting that up. USDAW surveyed its members recently, and found that 80% believe that crime and violence against them are getting worse. It was bad 20 years ago and, as Members across the House have described, we are now seeing more incidents of violence and threatening behaviour with weapons. That is not good enough for shop workers, who provide a valuable service—whether on our high streets, which desperately need our support, or in community shops on the edges of towns or in villages.

I am chair of the all-party parliamentary small shops group. We hear from people across the country about the vulnerable position those staff and business owners can be in, and I pay tribute to them. As our retail shops decline, and sole shops decline as well, we see a decline in our communities. High streets are important for bringing us together. Small shops are often the only place that people in those communities get to speak to someone. A shop owner told us at one of our recent events that an old lady said to him that the only time she touched another human being was when he gave her her change. Those stores are so important to their communities and to people across the country, so it is particularly important that we see them not just as profit-making businesses, but as providing a service. Most of the shopkeepers in my constituency say that they do not do it for the money, but because they love their community, and the community values them as well.

Those shopkeepers are on the frontline. More and more prolific offenders are targeting small, isolated shops, and more and more of the shopkeepers in my constituency are having to take on and tackle offenders themselves, which is a position that nobody should be in. Both through my work with USDAW and locally, I have met shopkeepers and shop workers who have been traumatised for life by the experiences they have had to go through. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) described the case of Barry, who I know; when he spoke with my hon. Friend at the USDAW conference, it was an incredibly moving experience.

The trouble is that our justice system is letting these people down. It is not just that police numbers are decreasing and that the response to incidents is not improving: by the time that I left the union, Barry, who I have known for many years, had still not seen the perpetrators in his case brought to justice. The court case was delayed again and again, and he was left knowing that those perpetrators were out there committing more offences, and feeling that he was in danger as a witness.

In my community, we have seen the amount that police can do to tackle prolific offenders reduced. Our local magistrates’ court in Buxton closed in 2015, and the local police cells have now been closed because there is not so much need for them now that we do not have a magistrates’ court. That makes it far harder for those police who are still there to deal with offenders. The number of community orders has decreased by a third; prolific offenders travel across county lines, knowing how to evade different police forces and evade justice, and our police have had to invest enormous amounts of resources in trying to bring those perpetrators to justice.

As we know, 20,000 police officers have been lost, but I ask the Minister what his party proposes to do about the staff who are so often crucial to bringing successful prosecutions. In Derbyshire, not only have we lost just over 300 police officers, but over 400 support staff. Those police community support officers, investigating officers and detectives are often the ones who do the work to ensure that criminals are not only caught, but successfully prosecuted. Without those support staff, that work is very difficult and ties the hands of police officers. I pay tribute to the Derbyshire police and crime commissioner; this year, through additional council tax, we had the funding to hire another 120 officers and staff. We got 58 additional police officers from that, but also 62 support staff including PCSOs, investigating officers and detectives. That is making a real difference to the ability of my local police force to bring perpetrators to justice, which we must never forget is an extremely important part of policing.

This issue is not just about political headlines or the number of police officers, but about the experience of communities. It is about people feeling that they are on the frontline and are not getting the response from Government, the police or society that they need to protect them and to keep those valuable community stores running.

In the run-up to Christmas, all Members will want to pay tribute to shop workers. Those people can expect an extremely busy time, but also, unfortunately, an increase in abuse by people who are stressed, and an increase in violence and in thefts by criminals who seek to take advantage of this time of year, with the extra stock and extra money in the tills. I hope that in spite of the election, we can send a message to our communities and to police forces and shop workers everywhere that we are going to act.

Public Services

Ruth George Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the passionate speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), and he is right: this is not a Queen’s Speech that has been written for the good of the country; this is a Queen’s Speech that has been written by pollsters for a Government who are governed by pollsters, not by the people.

When the Prime Minister talks of the people’s priorities, how has he divined them? It is by going out and assessing the state of the country—the needs of our communities and the needs of people who need Government most. It has been done by polling; it is Cambridge Analytica brought to Government. The priorities that he claims are the priorities that people have identified off lists from commercial organisations who are polling them. It is not about what is going to fix our country; this Queen’s Speech is about what makes headlines.

But there are two very serious problems with that. The first is that even where the priorities are identified, there is no substance to the promises behind them, and the other is that if something does not come up on the list—if it is not popular enough to make headlines—it is forgotten. These include things like poverty; that was not mentioned once in the Queen’s Speech. When we brought it up with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions at the Select Committee this morning she denied that Government policy has an impact on poverty; this is a Government in denial. There is a whole list of important issues that Members from across the House have raised this afternoon that this Government should be acting on—homelessness and housing and the leasehold scandal that is facing my constituents. This Government have all the information they need to act, but they have not done so. Why not? Because it is difficult; it is a difficult problem to tackle.

That is why I am so proud that Labour has put together a manifesto that is built on costed policies. It is built on raising income tax and corporation tax where we need it—not on £9 billion of tax cuts for the richest 10% of the country and then pretending we can fiddle some money into public services on the side. It just does not work; we know it and the people know it.

So even where policing is highlighted, with extra police coming in—we all agree with that: Derbyshire has seen 300 police officers cut from our streets and over 400 PCSOs and support staff that we desperately needed—what have we got? This year we have 85 police being recruited. That is great, but it takes a long time to recruit police these days. At the end of three years we are not even going to see the same numbers of police that we had in 2010, let alone all those PCSOs and support staff. This is happening at a time when the lack of police has helped to let county lines gangs run wild around all our streets. Even in my rural area of High Peak that is happening to our young people. We are seeing crime rising—burglaries, crime from across the counties. Criminals are coming in and our police do not have the manpower and resources to tackle it.

The Prime Minister has said that schools will get more funding, but the £2.2 million of cuts that the 50 schools in my constituency have seen over the last four years are not going to go away; at the end of another four years they are still going to be in the same position. Yes, the tables will have been slightly jiggled around. Yes, some of the smallest five schools in my constituency, the smallest 10%, will have seen a small increase, but 99% of their children will be at a school that will see its funding cut yet again.

On the health service, we have been told for over a year that the Government are going to be putting £20 billion into our NHS and into supporting local health services. In Derbyshire, we are seeing £320 million cut from our clinical commissioning group. Every single health service will be affected, from mental health to GPs, primary care, walk-in centres and hospitals—everything is being affected by those cuts.

This is just about headlines; there is no substance to it. All the important things that keep the fabric of our society together—early years provision, youth workers, libraries and buses—are being cut as if they do not matter, because they do not matter to the Government. This Government do not rely on buses. They do not seem to need to take their children to a nursery or a Sure Start centre to support them through poverty. Health visitors have been cut to the bone, as have school nurses, who are supporting our young people when they cannot get access to child and adolescent mental health services because the waiting list is a year long, and that is only for those who have tried to commit suicide. That is the level of cuts to our public services.

The Government must invest in those areas as a priority, rather than making headlines based on polling or sitting there pontificating and calling for a general election based on rhetoric around Brexit. We want an election that is based on policy and on what we are going to do for this country. That is why the Government will not have a people’s vote on Brexit or an election on what really matters.

Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: Small Towns

Ruth George Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tracy Brabin]

I absolutely agree. In comparison with cities, the quality of life in some towns is being diminished because services are going out to cities—infrastructure and so on. We should not have to put up with the increase in violent crime and antisocial behaviour in nice backwaters; we should have a proper quality of life and choose to live in communities such as ours because they are safer, the quality of life is better and they are great places to bring up children.

We have to be frank: the rise in crime is not just about a couple of bad apples, a family or a gang of kids. The Conservatives used to be the party of law and order—they used to pride themselves on it—but they have done their absolute best since 2010 to destroy that reputation. Police-recorded violent crime has more than doubled since 2010. Knife crime is at its highest on record. Arrests—the currency of deterrence—have halved in a decade, and the number of unsolved crimes stands at an unthinkable 2 million cases. Nine years of austerity has led to 20,000 fewer officers on our streets. The National Audit Office estimates that police funding fell by 19% between 2010-11 and 2018-19, and direct Government funding fell by a staggering 30% over the same period.

Police are not the only force for resolving, and preferably deterring, crime—no hon. Members present would argue that they are. However, they provide a vital service. When the police are seen on the streets less or take longer to respond, or when a crime goes unsolved, trust is diminished and fear creeps in.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case about her constituency, which is very similar to mine—a rural area with lots of towns and where crime is rising. Our police have almost halved in number. Our police stations have been shutting, our magistrates court has shut, and now our custody suite is shutting as well. Police officers will have to travel almost an hour to take people who have been arrested into custody. Does she agree that those cuts, and austerity more widely, lead directly to the rise in crime?

[Tracy Brabin]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the reduction of police officers on the streets. If an officer has to travel further with a prisoner, they will be tied up for longer and less available to respond to emergency 999 calls. It is a powerful point.

I said at the beginning that there is a crime epidemic in Batley and Spen. I know that that is strong language, but I think my speech has proved that it is justified. I very much look forward to hearing the contributions from other hon. Members and the Minister, so I will not take up too much more time but finish with this. The challenge is that cities, towns and rural areas are often very different, but the ambition should be the same. Crime ruins lives, and citizens should not be blighted by it or live in fear of it. The purpose of this debate is not to say that towns and smaller communities are more important than other places; it is simply to get a better understanding of the issues and to kick-start the debate about the solutions.

Does the Minister have plans to undertake an audit of crime in towns? My office staff and I tried hard to find data about crime in towns compared with cities, and it is not available. Will she and her Government produce a report that shows the difference in the levels of reported crime and crime that has been resolved in towns, compared with cities? We also need a greater understanding of where money is spent. Most police force areas include towns, cities and rural areas. Perhaps the Minister can work with police forces on that and update the House at a later date.

Retail Crime

Ruth George Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) for securing the debate and for his excellent speech.

For nearly 20 years I worked for USDAW, the shop workers’ union. I spoke day in, day out with shop workers affected by abuse, threats and violence. When I started out, I heard abuse mentioned as part of the banter in the coffee room, or members would speak at conferences about the abuse that they had received, trying to support each other and laughing at customers who abused them. They were trying to see the funny side, as so many working people do to get through. I soon realised that such offences were not laughable and not just the odd occurrences; this happened day after day, week after week, sapping away at people’s energy, self-confidence and self-esteem, and their ability to do their job.

I therefore worked with USDAW to set up the Freedom From Fear Campaign, with workers from across that great union, from shops and companies, and from all across the country. I am pleased to say that we had an enormous amount of engagement from shop workers, who welcomed the fact that at least they had a voice to speak about what was happening to them in the workplace. Also, professional support could be put together through companies, the trade union and professional organisations to ensure that incidents got reported as far as possible, and that employers did as much as they could to support their staff, putting investment into CCTV, reporting systems or counselling for people who were traumatised.

Shop workers have to put up with far too much abuse, threats and violence each and every day. On the basis of our surveys, we worked out that every minute of every working day another shop workers suffers abuse. Each day, more than 1,000 threats of violence are reported. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) commented, those threats do not just affect people in the workplace; threats are made by people who live in the same towns and communities as shop workers, so not just those workers but their children and families are affected.

Each day, 737 assaults are reported, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Far too many threats, assaults and instances of abuse are not reported either to an employer or to the police. As a union, USDAW has worked very hard to try to change that culture—to try to get the reports in place and to get employers and police to act on them. But too often, the impact on shop workers is not taken into account. We have fewer police on our streets and fewer police cells and custody suites; my local one in Buxton is due to close in a couple of months. That will impact on the number of arrests that can be made and the number of offenders who can be dealt with. Courts are closing down. We are seeing a reduction in arrests and prosecutions and, at the same time, a lack of the support services that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said exist in Manchester. I wish that such services were available in my rural area to refer prolific offenders to; too often, they are not.

Victims of crime over the years have told me how they have struggled to get back to work after being threatened or assaulted. They can have flashbacks; they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, for which there are very few treatment services. That affects them in the workplace as they try to return to work. They might find that impossible, so they lose their job and livelihood as well as their confidence, self-esteem and courage to go out into the community.

The impact that I have described simply is not taken into account. With the reduction in the number of staff in retail, employers also have to play their part. There should not be lone working, particularly in areas that have seen assaults and antisocial behaviour in stores, but we see this far too often—staff, often women, left to cope alone at night with gangs of teenagers or with possible offenders. Employers have a duty of care to staff, and I am pleased that many employers, such as the Co-op, have put a lot of investment into supporting their staff, but others do not and we need to send out a message from this place that that is not acceptable and that employers have a duty of care that includes protection against known threats of violence.

If police get involved with employers, working with CCTV and the evidence that employers gather as part of their work, they will find that they can work with both employers and shop workers. In an era when we are seeing a massive reduction in community policing, the police need to do that; they need to reach out to shop workers and to cafés and so on. If people want to know what is going on in a community, a sure way to find out is to ask the local shop workers; they will know. The police and the justice system need to give those workers the respect that they deserve. They need to take into account the impact of crime on those workers and their families and the impact on stores and on our high streets, which are too often suffering a decline. If they can work with them to tackle persistent offenders and get evidence on the drug dealers who are too often pushing drugs to victims who then go out and commit shop crime, they will find that they can improve the policing in their area and improve their links with the community.

For many years, I have worked with USDAW to argue for a separate offence of assaulting a worker. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn set this out. Shop workers do not feel that assaults and threats against them are taken seriously enough. The sentencing guidelines are extremely complicated. I worked with previous Governments on them, and there are so many factors to be taken into account that it is almost impossible for a victim of crime to see how the impact on them has had any impact on a sentence, even when an offender is actually brought to justice. A separate offence would simplify sentencing. It would encourage prosecutions, because it is simpler to get a prosecution in place through one branch of the law and through an Act. It would have a deterrent effect as well and shop workers would feel that the law is on their side. It sends the message that assaulting a shop worker is not preferable to being caught shoplifting. We in this House must send out that message to all shop workers, bar workers and café staff. They need to know that we, the police and the criminal justice system are on their side, because they are always on our side.

Gender Pay Gap

Ruth George Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Thus far, just under 50% of employers who fall within the gender pay gap reporting regime have issued their own action plans voluntarily. Because we want to bring business with us, I would much prefer employers to ask themselves questions about the way in which they treat their female staff rather than conducting a tick-box exercise, as is alleged to have happened. I will of course keep the position under review, and if we do not think that employers are making enough progress, we will act.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

The Minister correctly observed that good-quality childcare is essential for women going back to work, but the number of nurseries closing has risen by 66% in the last year, and only just over 50% of local areas have enough childcare services for parents who wish to work full time. Will the Minister speak to the Secretary of State for Education about the impact that the state of our early years sector is having on women who want to work?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. That is why we were so keen to introduce free childcare for children aged three and above. I will happily raise the point about local nurseries with the Secretary of State, but we are trying to encourage businesses and employers to think more imaginatively about how they can retain the talent from which they benefit. They may have spent many years training and developing female employers through schemes such as flexible working and shared parental leave—bold schemes that will make a cultural as well as a practical difference.

Police Grant Report

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

There can be no question but that the biggest indictment of this Government’s record on law and order is their long-standing failure to fund the police properly. Sadly, that is as true of this year’s funding allocation as it is of any other year’s. I have to say to the Home Secretary, in the kindest possible manner, that he is brazen in expecting Opposition Members to follow him into the Lobby on this funding settlement. We would be less than responsible if we voted for one that is patently inadequate. It is not just Members on the Opposition Benches who are saying that but ordinary police officers. The chair of the Police Federation, John Apter, said:

“This appears to be a quick fix. A sticking plaster solution that injects extra money in the short-term, but one which sees the burden falling unfairly on local council tax payers.”

Senior police officers think that this settlement is inadequate. The president of the Police Superintendents Association, Gavin Thomas, has said:

“Whilst I welcome this injection of funding, it is still far short of what the service requires to effectively meet the challenges of 21st century policing.”

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. In Derbyshire, my own area, the Government’s increase in the grant does not even meet the increase in the police pension costs. There is a shortfall of £400,000, which has to be met by council tax payers before they even start to contribute towards the extra policing that we so desperately need, and which officers on the frontline need to help them combat the stress that the Home Secretary mentioned.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes an important point on behalf of her constituents in Derbyshire.

The West Midlands police and crime commissioner says publicly what many PCCs say privately—that this Government funding does not come anywhere near to covering what the force requires just to stand still.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) for speaking about her experience, and others across this House who have been out with their police and have seen what they are having to go through. I also pay tribute to my local officers. I have done shifts at both Buxton and Glossop police stations and seen the amazing work that the police do.

When I turned up in the morning at Buxton, the officers there had spent the previous night clearing up after a horrific road accident in which three young men lost their lives. It was an absolute tragedy that no one would want to see. Those officers were deeply affected, but they turned up the next morning, did their shift, and helped to deal with the families and with the repercussions of that incident. I absolutely pay tribute to them. Our officers do this because they know that there is no one else. The police are incredibly short-staffed in our rural area, covering almost 900 sq km from two police offices.

We in Derbyshire have had a 26% reduction in our funding, which means £38 million less for our police. Our police and crime commissioners have tried to protect the frontline, so the reduction has translated into 18% fewer officers, but that is still 337 in number. Police stations have been closed in Chapel-en-le-Frith and in New Mills, leaving huge areas that are covered from a distance and where the police response, even to an emergency, cannot but take a significant amount of time.

This police funding settlement represents £8 million less from the Government than just the costs of pensioning off so many of the 21,000 fewer officers that there now are. In Derbyshire, the police will receive £400,000 less from the Government than they will have in pension fund costs. That means that our hard-pressed council tax payers are having to pay for the cost of police pension fund, which has increased due to getting rid of police. How is that fair or equitable? We have already had council tax rises of 5% last year and 4% this year, plus the police precepts, and more and more people are struggling to pay their council tax. In High Peak alone, 2,700 households have been referred to court in the past 18 months—that is 7% of all households. Increasing council tax is not an easy option. It affects the people who are poorest, who have to pay more as a proportion of their budget and who are also often those most affected by crime.

These people know that our police are suffering too. The police in High Peak are now having to look at closing the custody cells in Buxton. That means that to take arrested people to a custody cell, our police would have to take them an hour’s drive over bleak moorland to Chesterfield or over the county border into Manchester, leaving our thin blue line even thinner than before. There has been a 43% rise in violent crime in Derbyshire, and there have been some absolutely terrible incidents in High Peak. Our officers have to deal with these incidents day in and day out, often working on their own, turning up to the most horrific scenes single-handed and having to wait until they can get cover from other staff who can join them, which can take far too long.

I absolutely pay tribute to our officers across Derbyshire and to the police staff who do the very best they can to deal with the rising levels of violent crime, murders and suicides. There are mental health incidents that take them hours to deal with, when they take people into hospital and have to wait for mental health services to assist. They go above and beyond the call of duty, day in and day out. No wonder it is more difficult to recruit to our police.

The Government should stop taking our police for granted. They should start by funding them properly and helping them to deal with crime. That is what people across the country want, and it is what I hope the Minister will respond with today.

Police Pension Liabilities

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Yes, and that is absolutely the underlying motivation of what the Treasury has announced.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

The police pension deficit is in no small part due to this Government’s policies of forcing experienced officers into early retirement and reducing the number of current serving officers by 21,000. Should the Government not shoulder the responsibility for the impact on the contributions that are required?

[Mr Hurd]

No, the proposed adjustments to the discount rates are independent advice based on adjustments to projected growth rates of the economy—growth rates that I would hope will be significantly higher than they would under a Labour Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I will.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

T4. What will the Home Secretary do to help police forces to prioritise resources when they are faced with cannabis clubs, of which most members require cannabis for medicinal reasons, and an epidemic of Spice at the same time, which poses very serious risks to both health and law and order—both are class B drugs?

[Mr Hurd]

Operating priorities are local decisions, but what I can tell the hon. Lady is that the priority of the Department is to make sure that the police have the resources that they need to do their job, which was why we took steps to increase public investment in our police.

Saddleworth Moor and Tameside: Ongoing Fire

Ruth George Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I defer to my right hon. Friend’s personal knowledge and his experience as a highly distinguished DEFRA Minister. I am certainly no expert in moorland management and I think we should listen to the experts on this. That comes back to the point I was making earlier about the need to learn lessons from incidents such as this.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My constituency is immediately adjacent to the fires on Saddleworth moor, and I wish to extend my thanks to Derbyshire fire service, the police, the Army, national park rangers, countryside rangers, Glossop mountain rescue, gamekeepers and farmers, who are all helping to tackle this fire. Will the Minister please assure me that the non-full-time firefighting staff involved in tackling the fire have been given the proper protective equipment, as we have seen disturbing pictures on social media of Army staff without protective fire equipment being drafted in to put out the fires?

Rural Crime and Public Services

Ruth George Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

Raising the precept in the way that the Government have done is a fundamentally unfair way to fund police forces across this country. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I do not know which police force area the hon. Gentleman represents, but I am almost positive that raising the precept by 2% will result in significantly more in his force area than in my area of South Yorkshire, or in Northumbria, Cleveland, or many metropolitan areas that have significant demand.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

In my own police area of Derbyshire, we have seen a drop of over 400 police officers. Yes, we have raised the police precept, with £12 a year from every resident on top of the 5% increase in council tax for social care, but that will fund 25 officers, while we have lost over 400. There is absolutely no comparison in terms of what can be achieved.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend puts it much better than I did. Last year, the precept was able to raise £270 million. That is a drop in the ocean given that this Government have taken £2.7 billion out of policing over the past eight years. The force in the area of the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) may have been able to increase numbers from their existing point, but I am sure that they will not have been driven up to the levels that we saw in 2010, and will certainly not account for the level of demand or the cuts that we have experienced.

There are other demands on rural forces—if not unique to them, then certainly more pronounced. From cyber-crime to hate crime, from domestic violence to historical child sexual exploitation, the Government keep stating that crime is falling, but the experience of the police on the ground could not be more different. Nowhere is that more obvious than in non-crime demand that falls on the police. Non-crime demand makes up about 83% of calls to command and control centres, and in rural forces that is likely to be higher. Over the past eight years, because of the sparsity of social, mental health and more general health services, rural police forces have taken on an increased role as an auxiliary social and emergency service. I know of one rural county in northern England which, at the weekend, has one social worker on duty for the entirety of its social services, including for children with learning difficulties and those living with dementia. From 5 o’clock on a Friday, the police are the only service available to fill the gap.

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[Ruth George]

The Minister was making the point that this is taxpayers’ money. It absolutely is, but the decimation of police forces like mine in Derbyshire, which has seen 26% cuts to its funding over seven years, has meant that it does not have the capacity to prevent county lines crimes and the sort of retail crime that saw small shops in my constituency lose £100,000 last year from their tills. That is hitting them in their pockets. My taxpayers say they would rather pay a little bit extra tax, get a decent police force and not lose out through crime.

[Victoria Atkins]

I wonder, then, if the hon. Lady could help with the fact that her constabulary, as of March last year, had reserves of £32.2 million—20% of funding. It may be that the police and crime commissioner has plans for how those reserves are to be spent, but that is a decision for the PCC. We need to be careful. The whole point of police and crime commissioners is that they are democratically accountable to local people. They are elected by local people to set policing priorities. Decisions on how money is spent must be made by local police and crime commissioners. We gave those powers to police and crime commissioners precisely because we thought it was better for local people to make those decisions, working together with chief constables, rather than bureaucrats in Whitehall trying to decide policing priorities across the country.

As I said, taken together, public investment in policing has grown from £11.9 billion in 2015-16 to £13 billion in this financial year. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that he will prioritise police funding at the next spending review, again demonstrating this Government’s commitment to providing the police with the resources they need.

Community policing is obviously very important in our rural areas.

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[James Cartlidge]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. The way I would put it—which is kind of what he is saying—is that the fall in numbers does not, of itself, drive the social behaviours that cause a change in crime, but clearly, in an ideal world, we would have more officers to deal with it. It is a question of how we respond to the situation.

In terms of the primary causal factors, lots of hon. Members have talked about the county lines crime phenomenon, which was on the front page of The Sunday Times as recently as 6 May. It is a real problem not only in Suffolk but right across the country. The statistics show that 85% of police forces across England and Wales are dealing with county lines, and that 80% of those cases involve children. This is a serious crime phenomenon, and the growth in county lines, which involves increasing violence, leads to the spread of drug crime, knife crime and other associated crime.

There is another factor, which I find potentially the most interesting. I was at the Suffolk show recently, and I was talking to the chief constable. I asked him why he thought there had been this change in behaviour, and he said that social media were a really important factor because the videos and other media that are shared by the young people in gangs are being used to goad them. The gangs are goading each other into more violent behaviour in a competitive fashion. That is the type of behaviour that we see in the very worst crime areas such as Mexico, which has a terrible murder rate. The reason that crime escalates in such areas is that more violence is used to mark out and defend territory. We are seeing gang violence worsening here because the gangs are becoming competitive, and social media drive that competition because the videos—which, according to my chief constable, are often of very high quality—are being used to brag and to goad.

I do not pretend to have the answer on the social media issue, but I believe that the companies providing the media—they are private companies—have a social responsibility to involve themselves in this. I fundamentally believe that the primary responsibility of the Government is the defence of the realm, at home and abroad, and if the media companies will not get involved, we will have to start talking about the defence of the virtual realm. We cannot have any no-go areas in crime; we do not want them in a physical sense, and we cannot have them in a virtual sense either. I for one would support more powers to ensure that social media companies took action on these kinds of videos to ensure that they are not shown, not displayed and do not incite greater gang violence.

I also want to talk about funding. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) said, police numbers may not directly cause the changes in crime rates, but we need the officers in place if we are to resource our forces to deal with the changing patterns of crime. There are two elements involved: national funding and local funding. On national funding, I recently tabled a written question to the Home Secretary asking him what assessment he had made of the different costs involved in policing rural and urban areas. The answer from the Home Office was that it had made no such study and that there was no such information. I believe that rural MPs should be engaging with local stakeholders such as the National Farmers Union and possibly the Country Land and Business Association to look into the hard stats and the evidence. If we want to go to a Government Department and ask for a change in the spending formula to favour our local area—or rural areas more broadly—we have to have the evidence to show that we need that extra funding. A study of the cost of rurality in policing would be very welcome, and I would certainly support one.

My last key point is about local funding. I disagree with Opposition Members on this point. I strongly support the use of the precept to fund the police, for the simple reason that it is a guarantee that the money will be spent in our county. If we increase the precept to fund the police in Suffolk, it might cost more than an increase in central taxation that people would not necessarily notice, but every pound will be spent in the county on the Suffolk constabulary. I want to see more of that, and I would go further. I would like to see more of what I call parish policing, where parishes—or perhaps groups of parishes in electoral wards—would have the opportunity to fund their own police community support officers. This is where we must be realistic about rural crime. When the police in Suffolk deal with a major incident, such as the stabbing we had in Ipswich, or when we have the threat of terrorism, it is unrealistic to expect the force to prioritise shed theft or the theft of tractors at the same time, no matter how many officers we have. If our villages and rural communities want the added value of an extra visible police presence, they should be prepared to see something on top of the precept and get direct policing as a result—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) wants to intervene—she is obviously very interested in what I am saying—I will be more than happy to take an intervention, because she completely failed to answer the question about police stations earlier. In fact, when I asked her whether she would reopen closed police stations, she confirmed that Labour would not, and I do not understand why on earth an Opposition would criticise something that they are not going to reverse.

[Ruth George]

I am sitting here fairly flabbergasted listening to the hon. Gentleman making the case for some of his poorest constituents paying the price of delivering the sort of law and order that he says is the Government’s responsibility—the first responsibility of the state is to keep its population safe. People are already paying an extra £12 a year in Derbyshire, so how much more does he want his constituents to have to pay to get back to proper levels of policing?

[James Cartlidge]

I would be more than happy for them to pay more. Is the idea that the poorest cannot afford 50p extra a month on their precept to get a police officer? The point is that it would be a choice for the community. Many communities would not choose to have parish policing or direct policing, but it is a new option for them.

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[Susan Elan Jones]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman; it is animal abuse, it is cruelty and it needs to be stamped out. The punishment needs to fit the crime in those areas.

A couple of years ago I held an Adjournment debate in this House on rural crime, in which I highlighted the work of a local initiative—a rural crime mapping scheme—in the wards of Esclusham and Ponciau in my own constituency. The Minister then praised the local endeavour in our area, as well as the work of Farm Watch, the intriguingly named OWL—Online Watch Link—and of course the excellent work of the rural crime team of North Wales police, to which I also pay tribute today.

Many Members have spoken about the impact of police cuts. I must report on the situation in north Wales, using January Home Office figures. Five years ago, North Wales police employed 160 officers for neighbourhood policing and 254 police community support officers. Last year that figure fell to 90 police officers and just 148 police community support officers. That is a worry. Now, we know that there is technology and we welcome new technology—none of us is advocating the return to a sort of era of “Dixon of Dock Green”—but we do recognise that neighbourhood policing is vital if we are serious about tackling crime in our rural communities.

There are many aspects to rural crime, but today I will stick to just one: the issue of speeding on our rural roads, which I asked the Minister about earlier. Many of us are very concerned about the extent of speeding now. We need a major clampdown on speeding and, yes, a justice system that is prepared to be serious in its use of driving bans—something that is not happening to the right degree today.

[Ruth George]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of funding for safety measures on our roads is contributing to the increase in speeding? In Derbyshire, for example, an area has to have seen seven personal injury accidents within three years before the authority will even look at considering safety improvements on the road. Does she agree that that is contributing to the problem?

[Susan Elan Jones]

I agree with every word my hon. Friend said.

Let me give a couple of examples. In north Wales, a biker was recently clocked doing 138 mph on the single-lane carriageway A5. For that he got fines, plus a grand total of a 90-day ban. Chillingly, a newspaper report spoke of photographs of the defendant riding towards a triangular sign warning of a pedestrian crossing 250 yards ahead of him. That is terrifying. In another example on the A5 in north Wales, a so-called supercar—I believe it cost around £70,000 and it could obviously go extremely fast—was clocked doing 122 mph. That is double the speed limit. The driver in that case got fines, which were clearly worth nothing to the tune of his £70,000 car, plus a grand total of a 56-day driving ban.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists has shown that there have been speeds of up to 140 mph on our roads in the last couple of years, so it is small wonder that it has called for an increase in visible policing as an active deterrent to speeding. It has also called for advanced driving and riding tuition, and the continuous development of skills. As a spokesperson from the organisation put it:

“Those guilty of this level of excessive speeding are clearly not being deterred by a short ban or fine. Their minds need to be concentrated to appreciate that they are putting other road users at significant danger by acting in this way.”

We need to be aware that car occupants and motorcyclists are twice as likely to die on a rural road as on an urban one. For cyclists, it is three times as much. The road safety charity Brake found, in a Brake and Digby Brown survey, that 33% of drivers admit to driving too fast on country roads, 19% admit breaking speed limits on country roads, 37% have had a near miss on country roads and 72% support lower speed limits.

I would like to end with a specific plea. More motorcyclists have died in north Wales so far this year—eight people—than in all of 2017. This is a sad feature not just of north Wales but of some other rural areas too. This week, North Wales police released details of an anonymous call where a man’s partner called them and begged them to arrest her speeding biker boyfriend over fears that he would die on the roads. North Wales police released the transcript of this anonymous call. The woman told them:

“My partner is a biker and is visiting north Wales this weekend and already boasting that he will be doing over a ton whenever he can. I know where they are starting from. Please, please try and find and stop them. We have children and I would rather him banned or in jail than dead. I am sorry to put this on you as I know you are already overworked.”

It is time we brought in proper speeding bans, time we funded more police to watch over our rural roads, and time we took the issue of speeding seriously. I really hope that this will become a much bigger issue in years to come and that the Government will act.

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[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is completely right. The Opposition may deny it because it is fundamentally inconvenient to them.

[Ruth George]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I will happily give way.

[Ruth George]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. To put the record straight, the debt of which he speaks was less than £1 trillion in 2010. It is now practically £2 trillion. That is where the interest on the debt is coming from. Not only have this Government doubled the country’s debt, but they have decimated our police forces to the lowest level ever and are letting criminals back into our rural communities to run riot.

[Mr Clarke]

That is the height of economic illiteracy. It fails to distinguish between the debt and the deficit. We inherited an enormous deficit, so of course the debt continued to grow while there was a deficit. We have now virtually closed that deficit on current spending, and all that we now borrow is for investment. That is an absolute calumny in terms of economics, and it is frightening that the hon. Lady believes it.

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[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), my constituency neighbour, on his promotion to the Front Bench. I promise to try to be a little more deferential—I can’t commit to it—on the platform of Macclesfield station as we travel down together.

As the Minister will know, rural crime is the same as crime in any other area. In my very rural constituency, we have burglaries, shop thefts, car thefts, domestic abuse, antisocial behaviour, and, most recently, a serious increase in violent crime with the coming of county lines criminals to our isolated towns. The difference between rural crime and urban crime is that there is more isolation: there is more isolation among communities. There are fewer police and they are more isolated, too.

I recently met shop owners in New Mills, a small town in my constituency, who see gangs of youths committing antisocial behaviour, trying to rob stores and present fake money. Those shopkeepers are often solitary, working on their own in their shops. They tell me that they are frightened by the lack of police presence on their streets. In Chapel-en-le-Frith, the capital of the Peak, a beautiful little village nestled in the valleys just down the road from where I live, there are people posting on social media that they are too scared to set foot outside their doors because they are worried about the criminals patrolling the area looking for burglary opportunities. In Derbyshire, we have lost more than 400 police officers in the last seven years, as well as two police stations, one in New Mills and one in Chapel-en-le-Frith, and while the Minister can question the impact of those losses, people in those communities certainly feel less safe.

We have had an increase in our precept of £1 a month for every resident across Derbyshire, which will allow us another 25 officers, but that will in no way make up for the more than 400 we have lost. High Peak is an area of over 200 square miles and 91,000 people. We used to have more than 100 police officers across our four police stations; now there is just half that number. We have seen not only a 26% cut in police funding but huge extra demands on our police forces, particularly from specialist crime, cyber-crime, sexual exploitation, domestic abuse and modern slavery.

Now we have just 50 police officers across two police stations. I pay enormous tribute to Inspector Phil Booth of High Peak police and his team, who work incredibly hard over a wide area—and singlehandedly now that there are not enough of them to cover the whole area with two officers at a time. At most, we have 10 officers patrolling at once, even at the busiest times—the thin blue line is very thin! I saw this when I spent a 12-hour shift with them on a Friday night, driving huge distances, searching for missing persons, dealing with antisocial behaviour, domestic incidents and violence.

Officers often have to attend dangerous incidents singlehanded. Last month, one of our officers responded to a burglar alarm at a warehouse—a fairly common incident. He went out on his own in a police car as usual, but when he got there, three cars sped out of the warehouse straight at him and rammed his police car, deliberately injuring him. Fortunately, after that, they left, but we are seeing increased violence by offenders, because they know our police are on their own.

When I was sitting in the police station with the police officers, a young constable told me that she often had to attend on her own incidents where gangs of youths taunted her and claimed she had no back-up on the way. She has to claim she has support around the corner while knowing from her radio that she does not, that her colleagues might be miles away and that she has to hold the line on her own, and it is scary. Our police officers should not be put in those situations. It happens more in rural areas because the police are so isolated and covering such a wide area. There is a limit to what individual officers can put up with, and unfortunately more are leaving the service from stress and strain. They should not be in danger because of cuts.

On top of all this, we have recently seen county lines criminals come to our quiet area of Derbyshire, bringing violence, cuckooing, the kidnapping of vulnerable people, hard drugs and serious weapons. They come out from Manchester, take over a house in Buxton, Chapel or New Mills and hold inhabitants captive while they supply hard drugs in the area. When our police receive intelligence that a drug supplier is present, they have to request an armed response unit from Ripley, which is over an hour away. If they do not get that intelligence and have to raid the property themselves, they can be faced with knives, guns and—in the latest incident—machetes. They are putting their own safety on the line for us.

Rural crime might be similar to that in urban areas, but rural areas have fewer resources to deal with it. We could have a debate about the reason for that, as the Minister tried to do earlier, but I would rather make some practical suggestions, and I hope that Ministers will take heed. Our local court was closed two years ago, so now offenders have to be transported over an hour away to Manchester or Chesterfield, which ties up police time and resources.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady, and we look forward to the elucidation of her arguments, but I was a tad nervous when she talked about the subjects she wanted to go on to discuss, because a number of other Members also wish to contribute, and we must get on to the winding-up speeches as well. I am sure she will treat of these matters in a legendary fashion but also very succinctly.

[Ruth George]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Absolutely.

I am sure that the Home Office will be asking Justice Ministers to look into the impact of the next round of court closures on police and Home Office resources.

It takes six months for people in my area to receive drugs treatment. That means not only that those people are suffering, but that the criminals who come out for county lines have a ready-made market. Although hardened drug users are apparently begging for treatment, they cannot get it for six months, and that needs to be looked at.

Finally, our police tell me that they have a serious problem with forensic testing. It takes six months for an illegal substance to be tested. The police can hold suspects on pre-charge bail for a maximum of three months, so they have to let them go and cannot place conditions on them. Those people are then free to intimidate victims and witnesses, thus endangering their trials and the ability to commit them for sentencing.

I look forward to the Minister’s addressing those issues. We all want our police to have the support they need in every area, so that they can do their job of protecting us all.

[Mr Speaker]

Well! That was extremely succinct. I thank the hon. Lady.