Government Reductions in Policing

Simon Hart Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to have been called in this debate, so soon after last week’s proceedings on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, to express some of the frustration that has reached me from police officers in the far west Dyfed Powys force and, indeed, from members of the public, who are increasingly concerned about seemingly being used as a political pawn in the debate. It is affecting that vital bond between the public and the police, and indeed the morale of police officers themselves.

In our debate last week, I drew a parallel with the ongoing consultation on the future of the coastguard service, simply to remind myself as well as the House that the great passion for that service—one that is crucial in west Wales at Milford Haven—is built on loyalty, public respect, a sense of ownership and the sense that the coastguard and, indeed, the police are somehow part of the fabric and the architecture of the community, and that people know that when they ring the coastguard, as with the police, they will get a trusted and, above all, local response. That is increasingly relevant in this debate.

As hon. Members know, the Dyfed Powys force covers a huge geographical area of rural west Wales, but it has its fair share of terrorist-related incidents, urban crime and industrial-related challenges. Above all, however, what the force possesses is an ancient relationship with the community, and the potential compromise of that relationship, as a result of the terms of the Opposition’s motion, is causing our officers and our public to waver between nervousness and distrust and, at times, contempt. Public confidence is very precious, and the idea that we can compromise it on the back of financial mismanagement over the past few years is the scandal at the heart of this debate, rather than the proposals put forward by the Government.

Several Members have referred to conversations that they have had with their local chief constables, and I will be no exception. Mr Ian Arundale, who is highly respected by the public in our area and by his own members of staff, has told me on more than one occasion that the proposals are challenging but need not compromise public safety.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The Opposition consistently contend that we are facing 20% cuts across the board, yet we know that the precept is not subject to those cuts, and that officers are likely to face a two-year pay freeze in the future, which means that in fact the cuts are far lower. Does my hon. Friend agree that a much more responsible approach is to make that clear, as that will be less worrisome to his constituents and mine?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Indeed, responsibility and irresponsibility lie at the heart of this debate. I cannot think of a more irresponsible approach than to try to frighten the most vulnerable in society, and the police service itself, with spurious claims that cannot be backed up by fact.

[Steve McCabe]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that the chief constable of Lancashire, who is the ACPO lead on performance management, was being irresponsible or misleading when he said on the “Today” programme on 29 March,

“we cannot leave the front line untouched and that is because of the scale of the cuts”?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman may also be interested in the comments of the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who said:

“I don’t think it’s possible to make a direct correlation between police numbers and crime reduction.”

It is being assumed that a reduced number of police officers means a reduced service. I would argue, as have chief constables across the land, including my own, that that is not as clear cut as the hon. Gentleman might suggest. In Dyfed Powys, there will be a different sort of policing as a consequence of these changes—it will look different, as I said last week. There will be a greater reliance on technology, and things will not be quite as they were before. However, it is irresponsible to suggest that the public are somehow endangered as a result, and that makes the motion something that the Opposition should be rather ashamed of.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman says that police numbers and crime are not linked. Is he therefore suggesting that if crime does not go up we should carry on cutting police numbers?

[Simon Hart]

I fully follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic. The comment I made is attributed to a Member from his own party, and a similar comment was made by the former Home Secretary, so perhaps he will take it up with them when he has the opportunity.

I commend the approach of the Dyfed Powys force in its tackling of the challenges ahead. It had a simple strategy, which was to list its challenges as the things that it must do, the things that it could do, and the things that it must stop doing. Hon. Members may be interested to discover, as I was, that the last of those three lists is longer than Labour Members may care to consider. One such example was the victims of crime leaflet, a new Labour gimmick if ever there was one, which was abandoned by the Dyfed Powys police force as being a waste of officers’ time and the public’s time, and—guess what?—public satisfaction with the force went up at the same time as that measure was disposed of. That illustrates what I think, what my voters think, and what the police officers of Dyfed Powys think—that we would much rather have our police officers engaged in proper crime prevention and detection than in subsequently taking part in some sort of PR exercise to suit a political agenda.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman join me, and indeed the Government, in welcoming the comments of Baroness Newlove who said last week that the assets of criminals should be used more for the benefit of the community that they have harmed? How does he suggest that that happens in the Northumbria police area, where the asset recovery unit is going to be subject to the cuts that he is advocating?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman asks me to comment on a constabulary that is about as far away from my own as it is possible to go. All I can say on behalf of my own area is that we simply want our police officers to be solving crime and, better still, preventing crime—dealing with the realities of day-to-day life rather than engaging in spurious PR exercises and form filling of the sort that has dominated the political agenda for some time and that this Government are rightly seeking to reduce.

There is talk of its being easier simply not to replace chief superintendents—I almost said chief constables, which was a bit of a Freudian slip—after their 30-year service has come to an end. Of course there is a temptation to take that approach but, certainly in our case, it is balanced with the clear need seriously to address the issue of back-office support that other hon. Members have mentioned. That has been slightly misrepresented, because huge importance is attached to back-office police work as distinct from back-office administrative activity. The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) was a little disingenuous in not making that clear separation.

[Paul Farrelly]

I mentioned the 149 police officers being forced to resign after 30 years’ service in Staffordshire, but I did not mention the six police stations, including my own in Newcastle-under-Lyme, that are being closed because of the cuts. These are police stations that survived Margaret Thatcher and are now falling victim to Cameron-Clegg. Would the hon. Gentleman designate those as much-needed assets or merely back-office functions that can be reorganised willy-nilly?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman conveniently takes me on to my next point.

I do not think anybody on the Government Benches—obviously I cannot speak for the Home Secretary—has gone into these challenges with any great sense of glee based on any great ideology. It is grim reality time—responsibility time. I was fortunate enough to operate in the private sector before I came to this place. I was responsible for 90 employees and a budget of £5 million. Every single year I was forced to reduce that budget, every single year I went to my departmental head, every single year they said they could not do it, and every single year they said it would never be the same again and the end of civilisation as we know it, and—guess what?—after 10 years we had a lean, efficient machine that served its members responsibly and cost-effectively. What it boils down to—my own chief constable has said this publicly and privately—is that police officers are well capable of applying the same corporate disciplines in the police world that most people out there in the real world apply to their businesses. We should not automatically assume that a new approach to efficient policing will necessarily lead to compromises in safety.

The Government’s proposals take us back to relatively recent levels of funding, not to the dark ages. They remove a thick layer of bureaucracy that I thought everybody in this House was keen to see rid of, as well as members of the public and the police force. These proposals take police officers out of their offices and put them back where we need them: solving and preventing crime, and closer to their communities.

The scandal of this motion, and the reason I took part in this debate—I had no serious intention of doing so, but I was driven to it by frustration—is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting vulnerable people in society or defending jobs in the police, and everything to do with furthering Labour’s political aims. To do that in the run-up to a Welsh Assembly election when so many things are at stake, and to do so at the expense of the fear of vulnerable people in society and police officers worried about their jobs, is an absolute scandal. For that reason alone, the motion should fail dismally.