Crime and Policing

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I say to the shadow Home Secretary that I am deeply disappointed in what he is saying. I will tell him who that statistic means something to—it means something to my constituents, and to those of other hon. Members, when they do not see police on the streets. They know the reality, but sadly the shadow Home Secretary is not willing to accept it. The reality is that because of things that his Government did we have seen that police officers have been tied up in bureaucracy and red tape, kept in police stations filling in forms when they could have been out on the streets, where people want to see them and where they want to be.

This is not just about the bureaucracy faced by police officers; the previous Labour Government passed a record number of laws, but left office with nearly 900,000 violent crimes taking place a year. They spent a record amount on criminal justice, but they left office with 26,000 victims of crime every single day. Labour Members might think that that is a record to be proud of, but we do not and neither do the British people.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Could the right hon. Lady tell us how many of those victims would support her suggestion to get rid of antisocial behaviour orders or would support the reduction in the number of CCTV cameras? Has she ever come across a constituent who wants to see fewer CCTV cameras?

[Mrs May]

Once again, the trouble with the Labour party is that it is making up things about what our policy is, purely in order to meet the arguments that Labour Members want to bring into this House. On CCTV, we have said that we want better regulation of it and automatic number plate recognition—ANPR—and it is right and proper for us to introduce that. If the Labour party thought that there was nothing to be done about CCTV, why did it start looking at introducing somebody to examine the regulation of CCTV? The regulation of CCTV is important and I suggest to the hon. Lady that she does not go around trying to suggest that the Government are going to get rid of CCTV cameras as a result of our policy to regulate those cameras better.

The hon. Lady has given me a welcome opening here, because I wanted to go on to discuss not only the record of the previous Labour Government, but what we are going to do— that is despite the fact that this is an Opposition day debate. I want to talk about how we as the new coalition Government will deliver effective policing that cuts crime in an era of falling budgets, because we on this side of the House are determined not only to tackle the legacy of debt we have been left with by the last Government, but to make sure we deliver high-quality public services even as we reduce public spending. If we are to succeed, the policing reforms I announced to the House before the summer recess, which were so derided by the shadow Home Secretary, will be vital.

Despite spending more on criminal justice than any comparable country, we remain a high-crime country—the chance of being a victim of crime here is higher than almost anywhere else in Europe—[Interruption.] Those on the Labour Front Bench are making lots of comments from a sedentary position, but that is again part of the denial. The idea that this country is somehow a wonderful world where people do not experience crime or antisocial behaviour because of the impact of the last Government is completely false. We remain a high-crime country and we need to do something about it. The complacency on the Opposition Benches about this issue is, frankly, breathtaking.

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[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I should start with a declaration of interest in that not a single word of my speech has come from the Chief Whip’s crib sheet, despite the fact that my right hon. Friend was born and bred in my constituency.

We have heard a lot of speculation about the possible effect of cuts. As it happens, that was pure speculation, given that we do not know what the settlement will be following the comprehensive spending review, and Labour Members have not had the good grace to tell us where they would make cuts. However, I want to try to nail one issue by moving the debate away from the stale analysis of inputs of the past 10 years and towards an assessment of outputs. During its 13 years in government, the Labour party was incredibly successful at one thing in particular: persuading the country that only by putting more in could we possibly get more out. That is why the debate about effective policing is always focused on numbers of police rather than what they actually do, as we have heard.

Labour Members have always followed a simple equation: more money equals better public services. They therefore believe that simply having more police and PCSOs automatically means that there will be better policing, irrespective of what those people do all day—whether they are in cars, on patrol, filling in forms or responding to jobs. The Opposition seem incapable of acknowledging that simply having more police officers doing more administrative and bureaucratic tasks leads to lower morale and, ultimately, less effective policing.

Labour Members have extended the argument of looking at inputs rather than outputs to the public sector as a whole, but if their argument is true—if more public spending genuinely equals better public services—this country should have some of the best public services in the entire world. Given the amount that we have spent, borrowed and spent again during the past 13 years, we should surely have the best public services in Europe, but the sad reality is that we are at the bottom of many league tables because we have the worst services.

Labour Members will remind us that we have more police than ever, with 140,000 full-time equivalent officers in England and Wales, but let us not make their mistake of thinking that having record numbers of police means that we have record effectiveness of policing, because almost the opposite is true. Despite the record numbers of police, there is huge public dissatisfaction with the service. Significantly, the public’s attitudes towards the police are negatively related to personal experiences of the police service. The shadow Home Secretary likes to cite the British crime survey, but according to its 2005 public satisfaction report, although 89% of people were satisfied with their initial contact with the police, only 58% were satisfied with their follow-up contact. Only 50% of all respondents thought that the police in their area did a good or excellent job, and that was down from 67% in 1994. According to the BCS, therefore, such satisfaction decreased massively under the previous Government from 67% to 50%. A 50% satisfaction rating is a very poor performance by any institution; similar surveys rate doctors, teachers, judges and the NHS higher—unsurprisingly, only politicians score worse.

At the same time as we have record spending on the police, we have declining public satisfaction with the service they receive. That leads me to my key point: if more money does not equal better public services, it cannot be the case that less money will mean worse services. Why, when there is a record number of police officers, do the public still routinely say when asked that they feel less safe? Is it something that only Members on this side of the House understand? Only in the public sector is Labour’s absurd notion that better results can be achieved only with more money propagated. In the private sector, if better outcomes or more efficient production are needed to sell more work or deliver better results faster, spending more money is pretty much the last thing that those in that sector think about. If the customer is not happy, they do not put up the price; they look to take costs out of the business and seek ways to make efficiencies, improve processes, reduce overheads and stop spending time on administrative and bureaucratic tasks. If they conclude that efficiencies are needed to lower the price and stay competitive, then, by God, that is what they do.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument closely. We all accept that the service is not perfect. Does that mean that he believes that better outputs will be achieved with fewer police officers on the street?

[Mr Burley]

I think better outputs are possible with fewer officers if they are better directed and not spending their time doing administrative, bureaucratic and ultimately futile tasks that do not benefit the public in any way.

To continue the comparison with the private sector, Sainsbury’s employs 150,000 people in this country and is creating 5,000 new jobs through store openings this year because of—not despite—saving £4 million this year in administration costs by moving its entire staff recruitment process online. Tesco’s has just taken £3 million out of its cost base, simply by rationalising how meeting rooms are booked. Those successful businesses are competitive because they are fit and lean, constantly seeking ways to reduce costs and inefficiencies while giving the best service to the public.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I should like to contribute to this debate from the point of view of my constituents and the needs of my constituents. What concerns me about radical cuts to the police service is that we will see the end of safer neighbourhood teams as we currently know them.

Safer neighbourhood teams were introduced in the teeth of opposition from the advocates of traditional policing. The arguments were that police in panda cars, driving around in response teams, were a far more effective way of reducing crime than safer neighbourhood teams. I am not a policing analyst, but my experience suggests that, when it comes to tackling crime, confidence and belief in the police, and the process of becoming connected to one’s local police team, are more likely to be more effective than the response teams that we have traditionally seen in the Metropolitan police area. Discussions with my local area commander and with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner have reinforced my fear about the cuts in safer neighbourhood teams. They are easy to cut and get rid of, because they have gone against the trend of policing over the past 50 years.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady knows that earlier this year the shadow Home Secretary talked about making 20%-plus cuts. She says that she does not want to see cuts in safer neighbourhood teams, so will she share with the House where she would like to see the cuts made, and where she thinks priority should be placed on the savings that, unfortunately, her Government’s legacy made necessary for whoever were in power?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

The shadow Home Secretary has already identified this afternoon where the cuts would be made in the Home Office budget, and we believe that safer neighbourhood teams should be our priority, because our tax-paying constituents want to see that and believe in that. They want to see their police out there on the beat, to know their names and to know their police community support officers.

In 2011, we will see the end of the Mayor of London’s financial commitment to PCSOs. What will that mean at that time? The PCSOs were much derided by Conservative MPs and by the press when they were introduced, but they have been a tremendous addition to traditional policing, because, on intelligence gathering, PCSOs have the confidence of local residents and are able to discuss concerns with them. I appreciate the point that the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) made about the mistakes that are occasionally made, but when one brings in any new service or public administration, our urgency and desire to introduce them sometimes outstrips our ability to consider all the options and eventualities. Yes, in the early days of PCSOs, mistakes were made in service provision, but they have been amended and PCSOs are well embedded in our areas.

PCSOs are perhaps most effective in those areas where people are less inclined to speak to the police, and among the groups and communities that are most alienated from the police and from all sorts of Government bodies. That is because PCSOs are more likely to be from an ethnic minority, older and different from traditional police officers. Many people in my community, particularly in Pollards Hill, feel closer to their PCSOs and find it easier to discuss matters with them.

I also say to the hon. Member for Cannock Chase that policing is about not just tackling crime, but community confidence, people’s ability to speak to their police officers and a feeling of safety. That involves communication and the police’s ability to communicate. The police do not necessarily have those skills, because they go into the job to tackle crime; we—the political we—have to provide them with those skills and with the ability to communicate what they do. However effective the police become at tackling crime, the ability of the media and all sorts of people to decry what the police do can be so effective as to make people unaware of their achievements. They have not only to tackle crime, but to be seen to tackle crime, and that is why communication and communication skills are so important.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

In that typical way of new Labour in government, however, did not safer neighbourhood policing panels become very process-focused organisations? The aim of communicating with local people was a laudable one, and we could afford to do so in good times, but it was also a displacement activity, because one only had to talk to most basic command unit commanders to find out that the number of prolific and persistent offenders remained high. Those people were on a carousel in the criminal justice system, and safer neighbourhood teams did nothing about that problem, and nothing, in particular, about antisocial behaviour.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Can I absolutely oppose what the hon. Gentleman says, accept that safer neighbourhood teams were perfect and argue that their shift patterns were always correct? No, of course I cannot. I fought against the balance of shift patterns in my constituency. Are there problems with the fact that shift patterns have to be printed 18 months in advance, and with requests for uniformity among the teams? Yes. But my police teams in each ward in my constituency know exactly who their prolific offenders are, where they are and what they are doing, and their intelligence assists the other, reactive police teams in the division.

The amount of intelligence on, and knowledge of, communities is so much more significant now. That becomes really important in an area such as mine in south London, where population turnover is so huge and quick, and where from all over the world groups of people with different practices and ideas come to live, often becoming the foremost victims of violent crime.

The antisocial behaviour order has not been 100% successful, because no measure is 100% successful, but, on the idea that they should be scrapped because they are breached 50% of the time, I must ask, do we scrap laws on burglary, fraud or anything that we like because there is a recidivism rate? No, we do not. We have to try to find out why people continue to commit antisocial behaviour and deal with them. We are on a journey, and the police are entering an area that used to be occupied by different forces of control, whether they were the extended family, the stronger community or church and religion. Our communities are very different, and the idea that people are going to go out and tackle antisocial behaviour, confront people whom they do not know and put themselves in a vulnerable or frightening position is unrealistic.

We must see the police out there, taking action. They have to be there for people, when they need them and in the way that they need them, but I am absolutely convinced that huge, swift cuts in the police service will reduce the number of police whom we see on the street. A reduction in police on the street means that our most vulnerable constituents will have less confidence in the police, and that fewer crimes will be tackled, and in the end that cannot be what we want.

Our discussions in the House are so different from those that I have with my constituents. I have never met a constituent who has told me that the police have reduced our civil rights; my constituents want to see more effective ways of dealing with antisocial behaviour. I have never met a constituent who wanted to get rid of CCTV; all my constituents want more, because it makes them feel safe and confident. I just do not understand how some MPs can make the speeches that they do. I am absolutely confident that they would not go back to their constituents and make such speeches, because they are so out on a limb when compared with how people feel.

A reduction in the number of police officers is against all our interests, and against the interests of our constituents. I ask Government Members seriously to consider that when the matter comes up on 20 October.