Police Grant Report

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, can he help me to understand how it is in these straitened times that the Conservative manifesto commitment to increasing the cost of the elected commissioner experiment persists, while the Lib Dem manifesto commitments have been dropped? How did that come about, or is it that the hon. Gentleman did not have any influence? Is he at all worried that Lib Dem broken promises are going to create a broken Britain?

[Tom Brake]

I will leave it to the hon. Gentleman to promote the idea through his literature that the Liberal Democrats have broken their promises. If he looked at the coalition programme, he would find that, in practice—there is no secret about this—some proposals that we wanted to promote as a party before the general election are not included in it, while some proposals that the Conservative party wanted to promote when it was in opposition are equally not in it.

[Steve McCabe]

indicated dissent.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman is obviously struggling to come to terms with the concept of a coalition and what it means in practice. I am afraid he will just have to get used to the fact that these things happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

One of the Government’s first acts was to cut £7 million from the West Midlands police budget in this financial year. We are seeing cuts in police numbers, cuts in prison places and restrictions on closed circuit television and the use of DNA. I worry about the start that the Government have made, and I worry about the signal that they are sending on crime. Sir Hugh Orde, the president of Association of Chief Police Officers, has warned that it will be impossible to sustain the current number of police officers under the Government’s plans. Far from being fair and reasonable, as the Minister suggested, Sir Hugh says that it will be impossible to meet the demand for police on the streets.

The West Midlands police force is not an inefficient one. It is quite willing to recognise that it must make savings in these difficult financial times. Under Programme Paragon, it has ripped up its 21 command units and reduced them to 11 local policing units. That should save about £50 million, or about 8% of its budget, over three years. The force is not resistant to the economic circumstances that it faces. It is cutting overtime and bonus payments. It is cutting its training budget by about £500,000—not something I am sure is necessarily a good measure in the long run, but it is certainly not resisting the Government’s suggestion that it should make efficiencies. The reality is that, despite what it is doing, it is being punished by the Government for taking reasonable steps to recognise the economic circumstances that we live in.

The Minister failed to answer my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) when she asked about elected police commissioners, but the West Midlands police authority’s view is that those proposals are unnecessary and unwelcome. I have as yet had no contact from constituents to tell me that the biggest priority for policing is to elect police commissioners. I have had plenty of contact from constituents about crime and policing issues, but electing police commissioners is certainly not one of them. The West Midlands police authority makes it quite clear that it fears that the Government will politicise the police. That is what that proposal risks doing.

The reality is that not only is the West Midlands police force an efficient one, but crime is falling in the west midlands and public satisfaction surveys are good. The surveys show that the public are happy with the police response and welcome the greater visibility of the police. I can give the figures for attending the local tasking meetings in my constituency. If the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) does not have that information, I suggest that he contact his local commander, because it is available in most forces.

Bishop Derek Webley, who is the independent chairman of the police authority, has warned that the danger in a place such as the west midlands is that an elected police commissioner—a single person—cannot represent our diverse community. Far from such elections being an open step on accountability, they will be a backward step and do the opposite. The reality is that this is simply a Tory party experiment that survived; it is a Tory manifesto commitment that endured, while the Liberal Democrat promise on police numbers was dropped. It is an experiment that, in these straitened economic times, which we have been told about repeatedly today, will cost about £50 million—money that could be spent on policing, including protecting my constituents. If the Government are worried about austerity and the problems of the deficit, this is hardly the time to engage in political experiments with the police. It is an utterly unwelcome step. As Bishop Webley says, it is “a costly exercise” that will put the focus on short-term policing.

The things that we have heard suggested in the debate today, such as the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley that there should be a better connection between local problems and how organised crime develops, will be lost because we will elect someone every four years whose sole priority will be to get re-elected. The whole focus of policing will be skewed as a result of these measures. I have not heard a single constituent say that they are welcome. I have not heard a single rational defence of them today. We are told that the Government are worried about money, but they are prepared to waste money on an unnecessary experiment while they cut mainstream police budgets.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one of the tried and tested experiments that the last Government made in Northern Ireland was the Policing Board? It was made up of a majority of elected members, not elected directly but drawn from the Northern Ireland Assembly, and a minority of people chosen by the Government from the community. Although it was ridiculed at first, it became one of the most stable ways to hold the police to account, because it included exactly what he suggests: cross-community, cross-sectoral interest groups, holding the police to account on a regular monthly basis. That has resulted in crime being driven down because police performance was put under the microscope monthly.

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Policing in Northern Ireland is particularly difficult, but the steps that have been taken there have helped to broaden community support for the police. I am not averse to any measure that will make the police more accountable or broaden community support, but I am averse to wasting £50 million, when we have financial difficulties, on an experiment that has no basis or validity and that no Minister has yet shown any willingness to try to defend. That is what I am against.

The Liberal Democrats told us that they would put more police on the streets by scrapping identity cards. Well, we have considered the Identity Documents Bill in Committee—the Bill to scrap ID cards is in train—but it will not save us money; the Government will spend an extra £500 million this year to scrap ID cards. That money could be spent on the police. If they spent more time thinking about the police and less time pursuing these fantasies and being obsessed with cuts that serve an ideological purpose, which is their real basis, the police would be better off.

The West Midlands police are very concerned that the Government have indicated that they are not likely to give them a special grant, as is the normal custom, to cover the security costs of the Pope’s visit. Perhaps the Minister will want to say something about that at some stage, but as well as having our budget cut, we will incur extra costs, which a Government would normally partly support with an additional grant. That is what happened when the Labour party was in power. I can remember occasions, including the G8 summit, when such funding was provided, but that has not been promised this time.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend caught what Lord Patten said on the radio the other day. As the organiser of the Pope’s visit, he said that there will be a clear separation in that the costs of the state visit will be borne by the state and, where the visit is for Church-related purposes, the costs will be borne by the Church. Clearly, I do not know which category specific events will fall into when the Pope is in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but I recommend that he has words with Lord Patten to ensure that the appropriate funding is received from the appropriate body and that there is no additional strain on the public of his constituency in the west midlands.

[Steve McCabe]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. I simply say that it is customary to provide a special grant for such events. That is not what the West Midlands police authority has been promised at the moment. If the Minister wants to correct that, I am quite happy to give way to him. Not only are the Government not giving a special grant, but they will make the West Midlands police authority meet 20% of the cost of Operation Pelkin—to the rest of us, that is the Tory party conference in Birmingham in October. Some £800,000, which could be spent on supporting my constituents in their fight against crime, will be spent on supporting the Tory party conference in Birmingham. I am afraid that it is nonsense to say that this is a fair and reasonable settlement, and that the Government are doing what they have to do because of an economic necessity. This is the Tory party doing what the Tory party always does. It has a pretext for attacking the public sector and the police. It will waste money on political experiments and make my constituents pay the cost. The things that it promised before the election are as worthless as the policies that it is implementing now.