Government Reductions in Policing

Debate between Simon Hart and Alan Campbell

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.