UK Border Force

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The intention is that the National Crime Agency will be established in 2013. It will be necessary for legislation to go through the House to establish the NCA, and the border police command will be part of the national crime agency. I am not able, at this point, to say how many police will go to the border police command. I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that, given what has taken place, it is now necessary for us to have another look at exactly what we intend to do with that border police command.

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

When the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) told Charles Clarke

“because of this culpable failure to protect the safety of the public,”

your

“position is now untenable”—[Official Report, 26 April 2006; Vol. 445, c. 575.],

I am afraid he was right. Why is that remark any less right for this Home Secretary today?

[Mrs May]

I think I have explained in my statement and in answers to questions exactly what happened.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think I have answered the point about resources several times now.

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

The Met has said that gang association is one of the most difficult things to prove evidentially. How will the Home Secretary be confident that those who benefit from all the incentives that she is offering people to give up gang membership are genuinely gang members and not just the dispossessed who have had all other avenues closed down and have to claim to be gang members to get some help?

[Mrs May]

As I said, we are working with ACPO in particular to map incidence of gangs and gang memberships. Obviously at local level that will rely on information that is available to the police and other agencies. We are focusing not just on gang membership but on gang and youth violence. So in some areas work will be undertaken on a broader remit than simply looking at gang members.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, because how that system will work is unclear. I cannot get my head around the updated procedures. What consent will need to be given? What information about employees or volunteers will be made available to employers or voluntary sector groups? When will barring information be made available? If someone is barred while they are employed, will that information be made available readily to an employer? The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, which illustrates the fact that information on how the system will work needs to be made widely available.

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

Does my hon. Friend accept that the current system has its faults? There are too many examples of the wrong person being identified, and of information that is not pertinent to them being attributed to them by a false CRB check. Would it not make more sense for the Government to try to streamline the system, so that we have a more efficient system designed for the purpose, rather than adding to the complexity, therefore increasing the chances that such errors will take place and devalue the checks?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

Let me address the amendments in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and others. As we have heard, the amendments return to the question of how long we should retain the DNA and fingerprints of innocent people. They would replace the Government’s provisions, which meet our coalition commitment to adopt the protections of the Scottish model, with the core of the previous Government’s Crime and Security Act 2010.

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

Will the Minister give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I will, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a close interest in these matters for some time.

[Steve McCabe]

The country’s police chiefs have rather helpfully told us that large numbers of those who were arrested following the summer riots were arrested because of matches against the existing DNA database. Has the Minister undertaken any work to ascertain how many of those would have escaped justice under his proposals?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman highlights a key issue—the retention of the DNA of those convicted of offences, with which I absolutely agree. Some 75% of those who were engaged in the rioting—or, at least, those who were brought before the courts—had committed prior offences. That clearly makes the point that there is a need to put the DNA of those who are guilty of crimes on the database, rather than keeping those who are innocent of any crime on it, which is the approach of the Opposition and was the approach of the previous Government. The Labour party persists in its approach of keeping the DNA and fingerprints of innocent people for many years, no matter what those people have been accused of and no matter how little evidence was ever uncovered in relation to them.

It is worth putting these issues into context. Of course, DNA is important. I fully recognise the scientific breakthrough of being able to take DNA to search against the database and, most importantly, to retain crime scene DNA evidence in a cold case database against which matches can be made. However, the collection of DNA is part of a process of investigation and is not a panacea in itself. I think that if the Labour party could have its way, it would continue with the previous approach of simply trying to put more and more data on the database regardless of people’s guilt or innocence. However, it is interesting to look at what has been the result of adding many more people on to the database. In 2004-05, 2.8 million people were on the national DNA database and in 2009-10, the figure was 4.8 million people. Now, let us look at the number of detections in those years. In 2004-05 there were 35,605 and in 2009-10 there were 32,552, so when there were 2 million more people on the database, there were 3,000 fewer detections. I therefore challenge the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle that the more people’s DNA is on the database, the more effective it is. The figures do not necessarily equate in that way, as the historic evidence shows.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

First, I note that the right hon. Gentleman confirms that the Labour party is committed to reducing spending on police forces by more than £1 billion—but, of course, they did not deliver those savings when they were in government; it cannot be done without reducing the work force. We have identified additional savings, including those that will accrue from pay restraint, and indeed the £350 million a year that will accrue from better procurement of goods and services. In fact, the total savings are well over £2 billion a year.

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

Does the Minister welcome the news from Birmingham that officers are being taken off the street to answer the phone and deal with other administrative tasks? Is that the kind of efficiency that the Government are striving for?

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman should know that, in police forces generally, a third of human resources are not on the front line. Well over 20,000 police officers are in back and middle-office positions, with a higher than average proportion of them in the West Midlands constabulary. It should be possible to drive savings while still protecting the front line. That is what we ask and expect chief constables to do.

Public Disorder

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I simply disagree that when we were in government we failed to back our troops in difficult situations. We were very clear always to back the troops in the very difficult job that they did.

It is right to back the police and be very clear that we will support them when they have to take very difficult and robust decisions, but some of the briefings to the newspapers suggested that the police did not have the powers to use water cannon or baton rounds, and that they had them only because the Prime Minister had stepped in to authorise them and to encourage their use. This issue needs to be carefully handled. The police have always had those powers and it is right that they should use them in operational situations where that is appropriate and they judge that they are needed. We should back them in such circumstances, but I caution that we should be clear that it is an operational judgment for those police officers, not a matter of direction by politicians.

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

I agree with my right hon. Friend. If these horrendous events were to occur in the era of police and crime commissioners, is she confident that chief constables would have the power to make such decisions should a baying public demand different action from the commissioners? Would chief constables be able to withstand that pressure?

[Yvette Cooper]

Senior police officers whom I have spoken to are concerned about the possibility that their activities will be constrained or inhibited by inappropriate intervention by American-style police and crime commissioners in operational decisions. It is important to note that the operational independence guidance has not yet been agreed between the police and the Government.

Metropolitan Police Service

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. She reminds the House that our prime duty and responsibility is to restore confidence in the police so that people feel that the police are doing their job appropriately and properly. There are thousands of honourable policemen and women who are continuing to do their job and we should support and encourage them. We need to get to the bottom of these allegations so that the public truly can have full confidence in what the police are doing.

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

Given the Home Secretary’s fulsome praise for Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, should I assume that she will back his call for a delay in cuts to specialist posts, particularly public order posts, until after the Olympics?

[Mrs May]

Of course we have reviewed the requirements for Olympic security, and we did an audit of it when we came into government. In the run-up to the Olympics we will continue to ensure that the resources that are available and the measures that are taken will provide a secure and safe games.

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Given his experience, the right hon. Gentleman will know that Ministers never confirm or deny when asked what legal advice or opinion they have sought. However, I can tell him that the Home Office is satisfied that the legislation is necessary. If it were not, we would not be introducing it.

One hour and two minutes after the Home Office received ACPO’s professional, legal and operational advice on Thursday 30 June, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice delivered an oral statement to the House in which he announced our intention to introduce emergency legislation. The police’s professional and operational judgment, backed up by the legal expertise of two leading QCs, has guided the Government’s decision. Only fast-track primary legislation can give the police the necessary certainty and immediacy in restoring the law as it was understood to operate. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), what we seek to do is return things to how they have been for the last 25 years.

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

What many Opposition Members find difficult to deal with is the time scale. The Home Secretary says that the Government acted as speedily as possible, but Ministers did not meet representatives of ACPO until 24 June. The right hon. Lady could have read what was said by Michael Zander on 18 June, when he made it absolutely clear that we would need an appeal or emergency legislation. If she is the person in charge, why did she know nothing about that, and why did she not meet ACPO representatives until 24 June?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman asked me the same question earlier this week when I appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. The issue has also been raised by a number of other Opposition Members, who are doing their best to suggest that there was a delay. There was no delay. It was necessary for all the parties concerned to examine in detail the judgment that had been made available on 17 June. Professor Michael Zander is well respected in this field, in which he has considerable expertise, but I think that if I had come to the House and proposed to the Opposition that the Government introduce emergency legislation on the basis of an article that had appeared in a journal, the Opposition would have rightly told the Government that they should take a rather more professional approach.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday not to grant a stay in the case has made the legislation all the more vital and all the more urgent. I welcome the support for it that has been promised by Opposition Front Benchers, as well as the support given by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

We are talking about wider issues here and, if I may, I will deal with those later. If my hon. Friend wishes to intervene then, I will be happy to take a further intervention from him. I wish to finish the point that I am making and then deal with his point.

The case for rapid action to resolve the situation is extremely clear. Nevertheless, it is important that we set it out in the House to make it clear to the courts what our view and judgment are. The costs and administrative burdens for the police in trying to manage this interim situation should also not be underestimated. There is also a significant risk that clever defendants or defence lawyers might use that interim period as a way to get off on a technicality, which would mean that justice would not be done, the House and Parliament not having clarified the situation for the police and the courts.

It would be irresponsible for Parliament to wait longer to deal with the situation. It is not possible for Parliament to take the risk of waiting for the Supreme Court hearing on 25 July, as thousands of domestic violence victims alone need the protection of enforceable bail conditions right now, not in several weeks’ time. So we do support the legislation, as I explained in Parliament on a point of order within hours of learning about the issue eight days ago.

However, we should reflect on some genuine concerns. We have not proposed any amendments, even probing ones, because we think that the most important thing today is to get the legislation on to the statute book and to restore the position for the police and crime victims as soon as possible. However, the House should also have concerns about the possibility of the use of endless police bail. There are cases, and there have been cases, where people have been left on police bail, including with conditions, long after another suspect has confessed to the offence. There are other cases where investigations have run dry but action was not taken to end the bail arrangements. Long bail can sometimes mean that delays are allowed to develop, and they eventually become counter-productive in securing justice.

Therefore, we should, in due course, have a wider debate about the appropriateness and proportionality of different lengths of police bail and what safeguards are needed. If Parliament, the Government and the police do not have those debates about what we think is appropriate, we risk the courts making those decisions for us. It is important that the police have the powers and the flexibilities to pursue those investigations, but we need to give them support in doing that, and make sure that that is properly reflected in the arrangements that we have. There are issues to do with the fact that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 has been amended many times and clarity might be needed on wider matters, too. It would be helpful if the Home Office and ACPO considered more closely when, how and for how long police bail is used and whether the current framework is appropriate or needs amending.

In the meantime, the most important thing is to restore to the police the ability to operate in the way in which they have operated, and with the framework with which they have operated, for several decades.

[Steve McCabe]

I accept my right hon. Friend’s point about not tabling any amendments, but given what she has said about the application of bail conditions, is there not a persuasive argument for having a sunset clause in this emergency legislation so that we deal with the immediate problem but have proper time to debate the issues she mentions?

[Yvette Cooper]

That would have been one way to do it. When the issue came to light last week, we suggested that one option might be to introduce emergency legislation with a sunset clause before considering the subject more widely. The most important thing, given the time we have available, is that the Government have proposed a way to restore the system, and the whole House should support it. I hope that the Government will have further discussions with ACPO about whether any other developments are needed.

As several hon. Members have said, we should never legislate lightly when it takes retrospective effect. Changing the law retrospectively is, in general, undesirable and creates great uncertainty. It threatens natural justice if people end up breaking a law when they did not know of its existence, when it did not exist at the time the act was committed and when they could not have been expected to know that it would exist.

I have thought very carefully about the question and I know that members of the Government have, too. I am clear that a retrospective clause is justified in this case. Indeed, I urged the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to include a retrospective clause when I discussed the issues with him last Thursday. In this case, we are simply restoring the law to what we in Parliament thought it was, to what we intended it to be and to that which the police, the CPS and others have been following in good faith for many years. We have made clear our intention and so in this period of uncertainty the police, suspects and others should know what Parliament intends. If we had not made our intentions clear, we would have opened the police and victims up to considerable uncertainty about the prospects for individual cases, especially those under investigation at the moment. It would be deeply wrong for a victim to be denied justice and for the offender to escape on a technicality simply because the crime was committed in the limbo period between 19 May and Royal Assent and the police interviews did not comply with the temporary legal position owing to any confusion.

An even more troubling possibility is that historic cases, in which the standard practice was followed in good faith by the police and CPS, could end up being overturned or dragged back through the courts because of the Hookway judgment. In such circumstances, we should legislate retrospectively but we should be clear that we are doing so because we have considered the seriousness of the issue and that we have made the judgment after serious consideration rather than lightly.

I have some concerns about the process and about why we are doing this now, in such a way. I am concerned about the initial judgment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) mentioned the judgment of the judge in Salford, which was confirmed by the High Court judge. Judges, not Parliament, interpret the law and it was the role of the High Court judge to come to a view on what the legislation meant. The fact that the judge came to a new view on the interpretation of the law or a different view from experts, such as Professor Zander QC, is still part of the judicial process. It is possible for us to disagree with the judge’s decision while respecting his constitutional role in making such decisions.

My greatest concern is about the final paragraph of the High Court judge’s judgment, which the Home Secretary quoted. He does not simply interpret the law but makes a practical assessment of the impact of his judgment:

“It seems to me however...the consequences are not as severe as might be feared in impeding police investigations in the vast majority of cases. This is simply because in the usual case a suspect returning on bail will either be released because the evidence is not sufficient to warrant a charge or he will be re-arrested under statutory powers because new evidence has come to light.”

I strongly disagree with that practical assessment and the evidence of cases that the police have to handle at the moment disproves it.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I, too, will support the emergency legislation, but two questions seem to have been raised: first, what happened; and secondly, what are the implications of the legislation itself? On the question of what happened, there seem to be two different versions of events. The Government version suggests that they acted within one hour and two minutes, and we have heard a lot of support for that view, with Members telling us about the speed of events. Another version suggests that the clock started ticking on this issue on 5 April, when the judgment was made in the Salford court, and that it has been going on for three months. There has been a crucial judgment, albeit after a 25-year gap, about the interpretation of a piece of parliamentary legislation that identifies a drafting error that no one appears to have spotted in 25 years, which I find slightly strange.

[Michael Ellis]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve McCabe]

I will in just a second.

I understand that the Government need to deal with the immediate situation, but I find it slightly strange that we are going to do so by simply sweeping the matter under the carpet, because it is worth holding a debate in the future about how the situation could have occurred.

[Bob Stewart]

rose—

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

rose—

[Steve McCabe]

They are queuing up for me, but I will go first to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis).

[Michael Ellis]

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that the alleged drafting error in the 25-year-old Bail Act has been referred to before in learned texts, and that other judges have used common sense in applying the law as they thought Parliament intended? That is where there has been a departure by the judge in the instant case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

All judgments depend on what the judge thinks Parliament intended; that is the point. We have someone who was able to draw a different conclusion, however, and as we have reached this position I am happy to deal with the legislation today, but it would be useful if the Government gave us a further opportunity to debate the implications of the situation.

[Mr Buckland]

I was going to try to help the hon. Gentleman by saying that the matter had never been ruled upon—it had never been a matter of controversy. Practitioners and everybody involved in the system had assumed that the clock would stop on release from custody, but, for the first time in 25 years, that particular decision was taken and it confounded everybody who has experience of the criminal justice system.

[Steve McCabe]

That is largely the same point as the hon. Member for Northampton North made. Does the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) still wish to intervene?

[Bob Stewart]

I was going to make just one point—about whether the public have been put at more risk because it has taken some time to bring in this legislation, and about whether the police have been able to manage the situation. It seems that no one has really suffered apart from the police, who have had to manage the situation, and that now we require to put the matter right. If the public have not been put at risk, that is great, and if the police have been able to manage, that is good, too, so let us get the legislation through as fast as we can.

[Steve McCabe]

We agree on getting the emergency legislation through; that is why we are here. But it is a little premature to say that no one has been harmed by what has happened, because that remains to be seen.

It can be argued that what happened on 5 April led to people thinking that they were dealing with a little local difficulty, because that is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw, but it is reasonable also to say that, when the judgment was made on 19 May, people should have started to think that it had wider implications and alarm bells should have started to ring. It appears, however, that at that point no alarm bells whatever rang in the Home Office.

On 24 June, by which time the written judgment was available, no one thought it sufficiently important to be dealt with on the Friday afternoon. The Home Office received it on 24 June and waited until the Monday—the whole weekend—before starting to consider its implications.

The Home Secretary was dismissive of my comments on Michael Zander’s article, but here was a respected legal expert giving a clear warning on his concerns about the judgment. I do not know whether the Home Secretary knows, and I am quite happy to table a parliamentary question, but I should be really interested to find out whether the Home Office takes that journal, Criminal Law and Justice Weekly. I imagine that it does, and I therefore presume that somebody whom the Home Secretary employs reads it, so we should not be quite as dismissive of Michael Zander’s piece as she suggests.

[Mel Stride]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve McCabe]

Oh, why not.

[Mel Stride]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept, however, that the article was published after the written judgment? That is the critical point.

[Steve McCabe]

Presumably, one reason why that guy is one of the country’s leading legal experts is that he, rather remarkably, anticipated such a judgment and was able to give some advice and guidance on what might be necessary if it were so. I am not therefore too concerned with that point.

Are we seriously being asked to believe that Ministers and officials sit in the Home Office and wait to see whether the police have any concerns, and that if the police do have concerns, they e-mail, phone or send a carrier pigeon to the Home Office at which point Ministers suddenly start to take their responsibilities seriously? If that is what we are being asked to believe, I have a suggestion for the Home Secretary: why does she not make some cuts by sacking some of her useless officials, rather than police officers? It sounds as if they are not serving her particularly well.

The hon. Member for Beckenham, who has left his place, asked whether it was true that no one had been harmed as a result of the judgment. We do know, as the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said, that 80,000 criminal suspects were affected by the decision, and the implications of it are one obvious reason why we are here today.

I am not entirely sure that I agree with the hon. Member for South Ribble (Lorraine Fullbrook), who said that there were no problems with detention, because earlier this week I read a report stating that, certainly in the west midlands, the police are decommissioning detention cells as a result of the budgetary savings that they are required to make, so in some parts of the country there may be pressure on police cells as a result of the situation.

[Lorraine Fullbrook]

I was citing evidence that was given to the Home Affairs Committee, and the hon. Gentleman, as a fellow member of the Committee, was at the relevant session on Tuesday.

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Lady may remember that during the same evidence session the police officer concerned referred to 5,000 as opposed to 80,000, but under further examination we discovered that he was talking about the Met police area rather than the whole country.

I plan to support the legislation, because we are where we are and I do not want to make the job of the police any more difficult. The Government’s police cuts, in what looks like a concerted attack on Britain’s policing institutions, are making their job hard enough, and I have no desire to make it any worse, but I do not accept the Government’s version of the events that brought us here.

I have a question about how the emergency legislation has been framed. Earlier, the Home Secretary cited Liberty as an organisation that supported it, and I think I am right that Justice is one of the others, but Liberty makes an interesting case about the lack of safeguards in the legislation and a persuasive case for a sunset clause, whereby we deal with the immediate problem but then, at a more leisurely pace, look at the wider issues. Given that the problem went undetected for 25 years, that may be a worthwhile route to pursue.

On the retrospective nature of the legislation, I agree that it is necessary in order to deal with those 80,000 cases—and probably even more so in order to deal with what happens between now and 12 July, when it comes into effect. However, our law—I think this is the point that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was alluding to—relies on citizens being able to predict in advance when the act of a public authority will be lawful. Introducing a retrospective clause, albeit for understandable reasons, creates a situation whereby something that someone was doing yesterday, reasonably assuming it to be lawful, could be unlawful tomorrow, so that retrospectively they could suffer the consequences. That has major implications for the way in which citizens should view their relationship with the state. I do not object to the retrospective aspect, but it leads to an argument for a sunset clause so that we could have an opportunity, at some point in the future, to consider the implications of having to make such judgments.

Members have mentioned the problem of the length of time for which people may be held on police bail, particularly where it has conditions attached. The shadow Home Secretary used the example of bail restrictions designed to protect the victim from the alleged offender in domestic violence cases. I can understand that. However, I can think of a case in my constituency where a constituent had a bail order applied to him for over 12 months, and one of its restrictions was that he could not use his bank account because the case involved a fairly complex fraud. As a result, he had immense difficulty in meeting his daily living expenses. In the end, all the charges were dropped and he was never brought to court for anything at all. There is already a provision in PACE whereby, when the police apply for an extension, they have to give assurances that they will not take undue time in dealing with the matter and having excessive periods of bail.

These provisions raise once more the issue of bail conditions. We are putting through legislation to deal with a very particular crisis, but in the course of examining it we are opening up wider questions that would merit a much broader debate at some point in the future. Even at this stage, the Government could consider a sunset clause. They are getting absolute co-operation today in dealing with the immediate problem that we face: whether that is partly their own fault or entirely the fault of the courts is a matter of debate. In return for that, the emergency legislation should be used only very sparingly. It is not unreasonable for Parliament to say that the issues that are raised while emergency legislation is being passed should be subject to much greater debate and scrutiny in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises a very important issue, and action is taken in two ways. The Ministry of Justice is now looking at drug-free wings in prisons, so work is being done on that, but in the Home Office we continue, through not just regional police forces but the Serious Organised Crime Agency, to fight the fight against drug dealers and those who import drugs to this country, and that fight continues.

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

12. What assessment she has made of the potential effects of her plans for the national DNA database on the number of DNA matches.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

The Government’s approach is based on putting on the national DNA database more people who are guilty of crimes, rather than those who are innocent. Simply increasing the size of the DNA database does not necessarily result in more detections. We have been informed in the consideration of our plans by past statistics highlighting falls in DNA detections despite the huge increase in the number of profiles retained.

[Steve McCabe]

That is interesting. What is the Minister’s response to the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead on those matters, Chief Constable Sims, who says that there will be 1,000 fewer cases solved because of the decisions that the Minister is going to take?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman may also know that Chief Constable Sims acknowledged that such estimates were

“notoriously difficult to put figures on”.––[Official Report, Protection of Freedoms Public Bill Committee, 22 March 2011; c. 8, Q1.]

The Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee also heard evidence from GeneWatch which pointed in a very different direction. I again point the hon. Gentleman to past circumstances and to statistics highlighting that, despite the huge increase in the number of people that his—the previous—Government put on the DNA database, DNA detections have fallen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I assure my hon. Friend that any police and crime commissioner who is convicted of an imprisonable offence, regardless of whether they are sentenced to a term of imprisonment, will be disqualified from their post. I think that that answers his question.

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

Does the Home Secretary plan to listen to the Deputy Prime Minister and delay the introduction of police and crime commissioners?

[Mrs May]

Starting on Wednesday, when the House of Lords Committee stage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill begins, there will be proper and due consideration of every aspect of the Bill. However, it is our intention that police and crime commissioners will be introduced across England and Wales.