Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

If we repealed the Human Rights Act, which is one of the matters being looked at, we would just go back to having the convention applied directly by Strasbourg. The issue attracts a wide range of views, which is why we have set up a commission to consider them—[Interruption.] We have indeed set up the commission. It is composed of serious people who have expressed a very wide range of views in the past on the subject. They will strive to reach a consensus and it will be useful to get a properly informed and expert assessment of what the various options might result in. I am sure that the package of measures recommended by my hon. and learned Friend is one of the matters they will be considering in the course of their discussions.

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

4. When he plans to bring forward proposals on the future of sentencing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

In December 2010, the Government set out proposals for more effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders in the “Breaking the Cycle” Green Paper. We are finalising our response to the views expressed during the consultation and will publish it shortly. That will be followed by the publication of the legislation required to implement our proposals.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful for that answer. Is it the Government’s view that someone who breaks into a person’s house and threatens violence should automatically receive a prison sentence, irrespective of whether it is a first offence?

[Mr Blunt]

It is the Government’s view that justice should be done, and that is best done by judges taking into consideration the circumstances of every individual case. There will be circumstances in which Parliament has made clear its views in legislation. As a former Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, the hon. Gentleman will well understand that. He will also well understand the potential for miscarriages of justice if this place chooses so to tie the hands of judges that they are not able to exercise justice in the individual cases that come before them.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

No, on a free vote, I do not think the measure would go through. I agree with my hon. Friend. It will be even more interesting to see whether, on a free vote, the new clause, which seeks to give a legislative base to the protocol between police and crime commissioners and chief constables, would be supported by a majority. I suspect it would.

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

My recollection of the discussion that took place in Committee is that the Minister repeatedly claimed that one of the arguments for a police and crime commissioner was that the public would know who to go to and who to complain to. There would be a single point. He cited the rise in the number of complaints when the Mayor of London took on that responsibility. Is it not the clear message of amendment 149 that the public will go to the commissioner with the expectation that he can intervene in investigations and cases? Unless it is spelled out in new clause 5 or in the amendment, we will be electing people on a false prospectus because the expectation will be that the commissioner has that power. This illustrates the dilemma that the Minister has created.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree. That is the point I am making. An individual will stand for election in a police force area, saying, “I will ensure that there are X number of officers in this area and that area. I don’t want to see Tasers used. I don’t want to see such-and-such equipment used. I want to see the police patrolling not in pairs, but singly. I don’t want to see police in cars.” It will not be possible to stop someone saying that in their election manifesto. They are not going to stand for election saying, “I think everything’s wonderful. Vote for me.” What sort of election slogan is that? They would not get elected.

Candidates will stand on an exciting, impassioned, inspirational agenda for change in policing in that area. My hon. Friend is right. That is the nub of the dilemma that the Minister faces—what happens when that individual, enthused with their election victory, or determined to be re-elected, tries to influence what the chief constable does?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

I should first declare an interest as a member of the Kent police authority. I thank the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) for his testimonial to my work in that role, which—who knows?—might find its way into one of my election leaflets.

We have heard about the protocol—let us call it that, so that we use common language—and I note that the shadow Minister refers to operational responsibility in the new clause. It would be great to have a clearly agreed definition for operational independence or responsibility as it is, but it is enormously difficult to do that. ACPO’s position has changed on that, which does not necessarily assist us. The Home Affairs Committee visited ACPO two days ago, and it seems that the draft protocol is bouncing between it and the Home Office. ACPO had no objection to the draft being shared with the Committee when we asked for it. Will the Minister give the Committee sight of the protocol, even if it is still an early draft?

Amendment 149 is a probing amendment, because it is very important to get the views of the House and of the Minister on the record. I have tried to emphasise a point that arose from the 1962 royal commission, which is that there is an important distinction, as I put it in the amendment, that the elected commissioner

“shall have no involvement in decisions with respect to individual investigations and arrests.”

That is an important constitutional protection. The Minister spoke quite strongly on that both on Second Reading and in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. I am slightly concerned that one remark he made in the Committee, regarding the potential for too strict an interpretation of what Lord Denning said in 1968, should not be taken out of context. The context, as the Home Secretary said on Monday, is that we anticipate that it will be the elected commissioner who is in charge, as with the Mayor of London.

The Minister was very clear on Second Reading and when he gave evidence to the Committee on the role and importance of the elected commissioners and that what we are doing is rebalancing the tripartite system, moving from a police authority leg that has traditionally been too weak and bolstering the role of the democratic and local element with the directly elected commissioner.

I raised that point with the Minister in the Committee on 27 July last year, and asked whether there was any possibility of an incompatibility between what we intended with the legislation and what Lord Denning said in ex parte Blackburn in 1968. The Minister’s reply was important. He said:

“It is often stated, quoting Lord Denning's dictum that the police should be answerable to the law and the law alone. I think that is right in the sense of when they are exercising their powers of arrest and so on that that should not be subject to any kind of political interference. We would all agree about that but, clearly, somebody has to set the police budget and the strategic direction of the police, so there has to be accountability to someone, and our premise is that that should no longer be to the centre, to a faceless bureaucrat, to the Home Secretary; it should instead be to local people through the election of the police and crime commissioner.”

That is what we intend to achieve with the Bill, and it is a distinction that is consistent with what we saw back in the 1962 royal commission.

As the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) knows, the Select Committee received some helpful legal advice on this matter that read:

“This part of Lord Denning’s judgment is not strictly binding as it went beyond the range of issues that had to be decided in that case, and is therefore obiter.”

We then had an assessment from our legal advisers on a leading academic text in this area by Richard Clayton QC and Hugh Tomlinson QC, whose conclusion on Lord Denning’s judgment was:

“The doctrine is an exorbitant one and its legal foundations are very slight”.

I had a look at that leading text and some of the academic debate on the difficulty of defining operational independence and what it was considered to mean. Richard Clayton and Hugh Tomlinson referred to section 6(1) of the Police Act 1996, which the Bill carries over, and wrote that it

“appears to create a specific sphere of responsibility for the police authority”.

They go on to state that section 10(1), which deals with the direction and control of the chief constable, is subject to that provision, and

“only covers immediate operational direction and control but does not bear on the question of the extent to which the chief constable is under supervision of the police authority.”

The Committee went into the academic literature in more detail. We heard from Rick Muir, from the Institute for Public Policy Research, who has done much work—from the left—on this key issue. He agreed with me when I asked whether there was a distinction

“between the individual cases, where clearly the police should have independence in terms of arrest and investigation in those individual cases, and the broader spectrum of setting priorities, determining where budgets are spent and setting policy in general, which is properly the field of elected politicians”.

He observed that unfortunately confusion had arisen because wrongly there had been a

“tendency of chief constables to take Denning to mean that they are in charge of strategy”.

We do not have before us this protocol that the hon. Member for Gedling referred to, but the Committee was able to draw out some of the key issues.

My amendment emphasises the position in 1962. Unfortunately, when Denning made his judgment, he did not have the advantage of being able to refer to proceedings in the House. Judges have been able to do that only since Pepper v. Hart in, I think, 1994. The key 1962 royal commission, which set the consensus on operational independence, was summarised by the legal advisers in a report to the Committee. They wrote:

“The Royal Commission on Police emphasised the need for impartiality and operational independence of the police in relation to ‘quasi-judicial’ decisions”.

The royal commission included in those quasi-judicial decisions

“inquiries with regard to suspected offences, the arrest of persons and the decision to prosecute,”

adding:

“In matters of this kind it is clearly in the public interest that a police officer should be answerable only to his superiors in the force and, to the extent that a matter may come before them, to the courts. His impartiality would be jeopardised, and public confidence in it shaken, if in this field he were to be made the servant of too local a body.”

The commission said in respect of other duties:

“It cannot in our view be said that”

they

“require the complete immunity from external influence that is generally acknowledged to be necessary in regard to the enforcement of the law in particular cases.”

As our legal advisers point out, those other duties include

“general policies in regard to law enforcement…the disposition of his force, the concentration of his resources on any particular type of crime or area, the manner in which he handles political demonstrations or processions”

or

“his policy in enforcing the traffic laws and…dealing with parked vehicles”.

That clear distinction has therefore run all the way through, from the royal commission in 1962 to the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee has taken. That is what I am trying to emphasise with my amendment 149; indeed, it is also what the Minister emphasised when he appeared before the Committee. I would therefore be grateful if he confirmed that he does not resile from any of those remarks.

The other important point to make about Denning’s judgment in 1968 is that it related not to what a police authority could do in terms of a chief constable, but to what a single individual, Mr Blackburn, who as a publicly spirited gentleman came to court with a judicial review, could do. The question was about the extent to which he as an individual could require the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to implement policing in a particular operational manner. That distinction is made clear by further material, including the 1988 case of Hill v. Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, in which it was clearly drawn. In that case, Lord Templeman said:

“The question for determination in this appeal is whether an action for damages is an appropriate vehicle for investigating the efficiency of a police force.”

He concluded:

“A police force serves the public, and the elected representatives of the public must ensure that the public get the police force they deserve.”

It is clearly right that there can be no interference in individual investigations or arrests, but it is important to look at the issue from both sides.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing to the House’s attention what I think is a dilemma that the Minister has created. As I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman, I have been reflecting on what would have happened if we had had police and crime commissioners at the time of the Stephen Lawrence murder and the subsequent inquiry. Does he think that it would have been possible for the police and crime commissioner to fulfil the requirements of both clause 1(8)(g) and his amendment 149?

[Mark Reckless]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could cite that provision, which I do not have to hand.

[Steve McCabe]

I apologise. Clause 1(8)(g) places a responsibility on the police and crime commissioner to

“hold the chief constable to account”

for

“the exercise of duties relating to equality and diversity that are imposed on the chief constable by any enactment.”

In particular, I am thinking of what came out of the Lawrence inquiry.

[Mark Reckless]

Yes, absolutely. What we saw in that instance was a failure in the operational direction of the Metropolitan police. Rather than waiting years and years for an inquiry to make the Metropolitan police have appropriate respect for diversity and follow up on such crimes in the way it should, a directly elected commissioner with sufficient authority could have pressed for that much more quickly. Indeed, that is one area where we would be looking for clear, elected oversight and guidance for the police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

In my reference to litigation, I was alluding to the fact that the prospect of dispute, at least on the first occasion, given the narrow time scales and the costs of rebilling, would not be a positive thing. I have worked closely with my hon. Friend on the Home Affairs Committee on the issue—his hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) is strongly involved in these issues too— and I feel that there is a significant measure of agreement between us. In the coalition, it is important that we decide what we want to do, and state that clearly in the Bill and subsequent regulations so that we do not face the prospect of litigation.

Some Liberal Democrats may like the idea of a complete veto for the panel, but I am not sure that many of my Conservative colleagues would necessarily agree, given that the commissioner has a directly elected mandate and the members of the panel are appointed. However, I am convinced that a measure of financial oversight by the panel and by the councillors from every council who serve on it would be valuable. It will keep the commissioner linked in to local government, which is extremely important. The Minister has a criminal justice portfolio, and there is extraordinary scope for the elected commissioners to act in the wider criminal justice area. However, we do not want a great division to open up between local government and the work of the elected commissioner in criminal justice, so that knitting together is important.

[Steve McCabe]

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about this element, but if it is valid to argue that the commissioner must be virtually in a negotiation position with the panel so that they arrive at the right decision on the precept, I do not understand why, in every other respect, the commissioner should be able to arrive at his decision independently, with the role of the panel being simply to scrutinise it. Why does the hon. Gentleman make an exception in relation to the precept? Surely the logic of his argument is that the panel should have a different set of powers in relation to the commissioner.

[Mark Reckless]

The power over the precept is an extraordinarily important one, particularly over the whole elected term of the commissioner. Even I, as a strong supporter of directly elected commissioners, would be slightly nervous about one individual on his own taking those budgetary decisions for a number of years. I welcome the involvement of the panel in that, but I do not envisage a constant negotiation—[Interruption.] I apologise to the House.

A three quarters majority will be required. What is needed is almost a reserve power, so that if the commissioner wants to slash the budget massively against the will of the local area, or put through really hefty increases, there is some oversight and some way that that can be mitigated. The panel is a sensible body to do that, but we need to be clear what it would then do. Would it veto the plans and would the commissioner be obliged to accept that, or would it just say, “Go away and think again”?

The present wording, “have regard to”, represents an intended compromise, but leads to considerable uncertainty. As none of us wants to see litigation on this aspect, I am proposing instead that we bolster the local crime panel with a clear power. That will not necessarily be a veto as, if it is, it will be a soft veto. If the panel was seriously worried about the precept, there could be a referendum in the local area. The members of the panel would be appointed by the councils in that area, so those councils would bear the cost of a referendum. They would think long and hard before calling a referendum if they were paying for it.

That arrangement would provide some protection. If the commissioner went off in one direction, away from others, it would give some possibility of pulling him back, but it would not make him subject to the panel, because the commissioner would have the directly elected mandate, whereas the panel would be appointed. Giving the panel the power to require a referendum would be a sensible way forward.

We may be envisaging a referendum power, but it seems that we are expecting to import parts of the Localism Bill into the policing environment, when we already have a separate police and crime panel as a check on the elected commissioner, whereas we do not have a similar check in local government. I propose that the two should be distinct and that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government should have the power of referendum for local councils, but in the policing universe where we are setting up a panel that will be representative, that panel should be responsible. In extremis, it would have the power to call a referendum on the local precept. We therefore would not need the central oversight and dictation of the Secretary of State in this area.

The new clause would bring greater clarity and provide the local and democratic arrangements that we need. I commend it to the House.

[Steve McCabe]

I shall be brief. I am intrigued that the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has tabled the new clause. It is a matter of great regret that he was not a member of the Committee that scrutinised the Bill. What we are beginning to hear in his contributions is how much doubt exists in the hearts of Conservative Back Benchers about some of the key elements of the Bill. That was evident in some of his earlier amendments, but it is extremely evident in this group. He is prepared to tolerate a single elected individual having enormous power over the shape and influence of an area police force over a four-year cycle. He is prepared to tolerate a police and crime plan that might change the shape and direction of the force beyond all recognition. Despite being a loyal and active member of a police authority that has massive experience and whose benefits he regularly tells us about, he is prepared to put up with all those measures.

The hon. Gentleman realises in his heart the fundamental danger that, if the Government persist with their present approach to cuts in police funding, at some stage authorities in parts of the country of the kind he represents will be on a collision course with the Government. The police commissioner will be forced to look at the question of the precept as a means of off-setting the budget cuts that the force is facing. The hon. Gentleman does not want to be in that position when a single elected police commissioner is able to bring forward a proposal for a hugely increased precept, because he fears what the electors in his area will say about that and the repercussions for himself and his party followers.

[Mark Reckless]

I must say that that really is not the case and has not been my experience. In Kent we have been able to find significant savings in our budget while protecting the front line and, in the words of our chief constable, have an opportunity to have a more efficient and effective force. As an elected Member, I looked to constituents in the private sector who are suffering and wanted to see some savings made in the police budget. My colleagues did not agree this year—they perhaps did not have the same direct election focus—but then they did come to realise this and we found significant savings. It is because we have that democratic element that we are able to find the savings and get the police to operate more efficiently, and the elected commissioners should be able to do that even better.

[Steve McCabe]

That democratic element cannot be fundamentally unique in relation to setting the precept but absolutely different in relation to any other aspect of the work of the commissioner. It is my contention that the people who support the amendment fear what will happen when the precept has to be ratcheted up to compensate for the cuts. They know that there will be massive electoral consequences and so are seeking to insert a device to denude the commissioner of the one power that they fear more than any other.

[Dr Huppert]

I am not sure that I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he not agree that the precept is in some sense absolutely key to what is happening, because it sets the total envelope of resource available to a chief constable to do their job? It is one of the most fundamental decisions that could be made by the commissioner.

[Steve McCabe]

If I was to stand as a candidate for police commissioner and was setting out my stall for the kind of police force I would want to see, I would not have to put on my election material the caveat, “By the way, I’ll have no power over the fundamental decision about funding.” With the greatest respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman has missed the point. The Government are trying to have it both ways: they want to create political commissars to run the police, but they also want to retain the power to mitigate the risk that the commissioner might come up with a precept that is unacceptable to the electorate. That is classically what is wrong with the Bill. It is designed to give the commissioner power in the areas that suit the Government, but at the heart of the Conservative party there is a doubt about that. The Government are trying to back the proposal while simultaneously watering down its key element because they fear that the course of action that they have embarked on will have electoral consequences for them.

[Michael Ellis]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm whether the previous Labour Government did something very similar on elected mayors?

[Steve McCabe]

I am talking about police commissioners, although I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that I am not particularly a fan of elected mayors. However, if we are going to have mayors, I would have them elected, not imposed under a shadowing arrangement first, because that suggests that there is some doubt about their validity. If he wants to talk about elected mayors, he should move on to safer ground.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I am still unclear. If the hon. Gentleman does not support the alternative in the new clause, is he saying that he prefers the existing mechanism, which involves the Secretary of State? Which is he arguing for, or is he arguing against both?

[Steve McCabe]

I am saying quite simply that the nature of the existing powers, as I understand them, would give the Secretary of State the right to intervene. If the Government do not have faith in their own system, it seems right that they should have the power to intervene. However, what I do not want is a scheme that says, “We’re in favour of police commissioners, but by the way we’re going to limit their power when it comes to the area where we think there could be electoral disadvantage for us.”

[Dr Huppert]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). We have spent much time together on the Bill Committee, on a previous Bill Committee and in the Home Affairs Select Committee crossing swords on some of these issues. I am encouraged by the new clause in the name of the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), because it would do some useful things for which I argued in Committee. It talks about strengthening the panel. We talked earlier about the Liberal Democrats’ initial manifesto commitment to having a strong panel, and there have been negotiations among the different sides about how to fit the two models together. However, the new clause moves in the direction I tend to prefer, so as ever it is a pleasure to work with him.

The new clause also leans more towards local accountability, which to me is very important. I have always been a localist—not only since the formation of the coalition Government—and I think that this policy should be about local determination. That was what was wrong with capping council taxes. We had councils that could not make sensible decisions owing to capping powers and because the Secretary of State was too remote from what was going on locally. Those councils could not make sensible decisions whether on tiny increases in very low council taxes, because those increases went above a certain percentage, or on moving from a council tax of zero, which was possible in a few rather unusual places, because any increase broke the percentage rule.

What the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said was interesting. First, there is the issue of the precept. Why is the precept different from all other areas? We could adjust a whole lot of different premises, but the precept is the key. As I said in my intervention, it is what determines how much money is available to the chief constable. If only one decision could be made by a commissioner each year, the total amount of cash is surely the one for which we would want to provide the most control. It is also the one on which there would not be advice and policy guidance from other bodies on how to operate and what the constraints might be. It is properly a decision to be taken locally.

There are questions about what one does if a commissioner makes a decision that is held to be unreasonable by other people locally. This applies whether to a commissioner or a council leader. Whatever the structure, there will always be situations in which there is disagreement about whether something is being done appropriately. The question is: how do we resolve that disagreement? I was interested in the response that the hon. Gentleman gave to my question. He seemed to be arguing for the Secretary of State to have that power, but that is precisely the opposite of the localist agenda that I would like put in place. The Secretary of State should not be interfering in how the precept is set. They should do their utmost not to have anything to do with it, if possible. They should have a role in setting the framework, but they should not have the power to say, “That is too much. I’m the Secretary of State and I say so.”

[Steve McCabe]

Perhaps I can clarify matters a fraction for the hon. Gentleman. My point is that the police Minister and the Secretary of State inevitably have some responsibilities for the police that go beyond localism, as was discussed extensively in Committee. In fact, if I recall rightly, we discussed what would happen if the budget was set too low and therefore did not enable the police force to fulfil its obligations. The argument that the Minister advanced at the time was that the Secretary of State should have the power to step in. The hon. Gentleman seems to arguing for a pure form of localism that completely ignores that—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Interventions are becoming increasingly lengthy, and they need to be rather shorter.

Police

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with the right hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and I will address that issue later, as I intend to set out the savings that I believe can be made. The Home Office has a role to play in driving that, and in asking for the leadership of forces to share services and collaborate so that we can realise the considerable savings that are possible in procurement.

I was talking about funding to ensure national security. Similarly, funding for Olympic security has been prioritised. Up to £600 million will remain available if required for the safety and security programme, as originally pledged, although we expect that that should be delivered for rather less, at £475 million.

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

If it transpires that the Minister can pay for Olympic security at the lower figure as he hopes, what will he do with the extra money? Will it be reinvested to make up for some of the police cuts?

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right: West Midlands police are being heavily affected and are set to lose a large number of police officers. That is already having an effect on communities across the area, with some police officers reporting considerable difficulties as a result of the recruitment freeze that has had to be implemented and the consequences that is having on their ability to go to neighbourhood meetings and to respond to concerns that are raised with them.

[Steve McCabe]

Is not one of the problems that the West Midlands police suffer from the gearing effect? Although the Minister has given the impression that the cuts were modest—I think he quoted £5 million in Hull—the gearing effect in the West Midlands police means they are losing 17.2% of their total resources. That is nearly £100 million, and they cannot lose that without cutting front-line staff.

[Yvette Cooper]

The situation in the west midlands is clear. The number of police officers is being cut and that is having an impact on the area.

The latest research on the links between police and crime from Civitas, which the Minister presumably regards as a bastion of left-wing profligacy—he shakes his head to indicate that he disagrees with Civitas—shows that there is a

“strong relationship between the size of police forces and national crime rates”.

That report states:

“A nation with a larger proportion of police officers is somewhat more likely to have a lower crime rate. A nation with fewer police is more likely to have a higher crime rate.”

More importantly, perhaps, those on the Government Benches are ignoring the public. Today’s poll shows that two thirds of people believe that crime will rise as a result of the Home Secretary’s cuts. People do not want the cuts to the police that the Government are introducing.

The Minister often resorts to the claim that it is Labour’s red tape which is responsible for the fact that only 11%—to quote the figure that he uses—of force strength is visible and available. He fails to point out, in a misrepresentation of the HMIC analysis, that that figure for a 24 hours a day, seven days a week service does not take account of the officers on late shift, night shift or rest day, or of the officers working on serious investigations, counter-terrorism, drugs, cyber crime or child protection.

The right hon. Gentleman should consider for a moment what would happen if his own efficiency were measured in the same way. Let us imagine that the test of Ministers’ efficiency was the amount of time in a 24/7 period that they spent speaking in the House of Commons. The amount of time that the Policing Minister spends sleeping, eating and working on knife crime, counter-terrorism or long-term planning would not be counted, as the Government do not count comparable time for the police.

On the basis of the Minister’s week in the Chamber for debate and in the Bill Committee—he has been busy —he gets to an average visibility 24/7 of not 11%, which the police manage, but 3.27%, and that includes the radio time that he was forced to do on Sunday. His visibility is not as good as that of the police, but I am sure he has some efficiency plans to share his red boxes across Departments. His boss, the Home Secretary, is at 0%. Where, by the way, is the Home Secretary?

West Midlands Police

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you for granting this Adjournment debate, Mr Speaker. This is my third encounter today with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice. I assure him that I am not tiring of it, even if he might be getting a little fed up with the sight of me. I am glad that a number of colleagues have stayed for the Adjournment debate, which shows their concern about this issue.

Alongside many of my west midlands colleagues, I have spent quite a bit of time recently discussing the likely effects of cuts and reductions in policing. We have talked with the Minister, shadow Ministers, police officers of various ranks, members of the police authority and other key stakeholders. We all know that reductions in police funding are going to be at their worst in places such as the west midlands, and that there may well be consequences that have so far been overlooked.

Inevitably, talk of police cuts leads to discussions about the risks of rising crime and arguments over how the police use their time. Depending on the audience, it is not uncommon for young people to figure in the discussions, as if they are a major cause of crime and antisocial behaviour and the entire nature of their relationship with the police is one of conflict. I do not accept that—hence tonight’s debate. It is easy to forget that the police are often the first port of call for worried parents when youngsters go missing or run away from home, when youngsters fall into bad company or when parents feel they are losing control. In my constituency of Selly Oak, it is common to see the police playing an active role in working in schools and youth clubs. They take a very hands-on approach.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that school-based police officers are crucial and make a huge difference that is noted by parents, teachers and local residents and, in particular, by students themselves? He might be interested to know that I was lobbied last week by year 7 and 9 pupils from Small Heath school in my constituency—incidentally, it is my former school. They were lamenting the loss of their local police constable, PC Inglis, who had been based at their school for a number of years and had made such an impact on the students and on antisocial behaviour, the rates of which had declined significantly.

[Steve McCabe]

I agree with my hon. Friend. At Highters Heath school, it is not unusual to see officers taking part in lessons or accompanying children on school trips. That is part of a project developed by the head teacher, Jan Connor, in conjunction with her local police inspector and sergeant. They recognised that contact with the police had to be about more than warnings, inquiries or witnessing arrests, so they set out to break down the barriers and build a long-term relationship with the community. That is important, but it will be hard to measure when the accountants want to balance the books. As with my hon. Friend, the young people and constituents whom I speak to tell me that it is making a difference.

I often get complaints from constituents about antisocial behaviour on the Chinn Brook recreation ground, especially during the lighter nights. The solution in the old-fashioned, vehicle-led reactive policing days might have been to send out a car and issue a few warnings or round up the loudest. That does not really solve the problem and risks alienating young people from the police.

Last summer, I attended a barbecue organised by a local inspector and a sergeant and her team. They sent invitations to families across the area. They made it clear that the recreation ground could be used for fun and family events, but that it had to be shared and the needs of others respected. They worked hard to sign up every youngster who attended for a sports challenge or some other activity to keep them busy on summer nights. That is the kind of policing that my constituents want, and it is the kind of policing that pays dividends with young people.

West Midlands police have been one of the pioneers of a return to what is sometimes called autonomous or common-sense policing, whereby the police set out to resolve community conflicts, antisocial behaviour and sometimes intergenerational tensions by using their guile and common sense, rather than boosting their arrest figures. Using that kind of policing, minor vandalism can be dealt with by perpetrators putting right the damage, or a punch-up in the school playground not automatically being recorded as an assault. For me, that is the foundation of neighbourhood policing.

Many years ago, when I worked with young offenders, I can well remember the juvenile court packed with cases that might have been dealt with differently with a bit more common sense and desire for a just solution. That is why I am anxious to protect this model of policing. I am not alone in that view. More than 600 of my constituents have been in touch with me to express their anxieties about what might happen if there is a huge reduction in officers and less time for community engagement.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that what he is referring to is replicated in a great many places across the United Kingdom, including in my constituency. It involves community policing, new ideas—sometimes, midnight football—and flexibility with children. It does not necessarily apply the rule of law and use prosecution, but it shows how we work with them and take them away from the attractions that sometimes lead them astray.

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is right that the police should try to forge links with those young people whom we sometimes describe as “hard to reach”. The police should work with charities, voluntary groups and youth groups to help young people to feel safe and to enjoy themselves, while remembering to respect the needs of others. That is as important for front-line visibility as anything else that Sir Denis O’Connor might comment on.

We can argue another time about the intensity of the Government cuts and whether their scale and timing are right. For the purposes of this debate, however, I simply want to highlight my fears about some of their unintended consequences. Birmingham council’s antisocial behaviour unit will be a victim of the cuts. It will lose most of its staff and might have to close. Although I have not necessarily agreed with its approach on everything, I recognise that its trailblazing work is designed to prevent the growth and persistence of the antisocial behaviour that wrecks communities and destroys lives. In 2010, the unit was able to work with the police on a spate of gang-related activities, as well as the identification and closure of premises that were being used as brothels in a dark world where young women are often lured into a life of depravity and despair. The police have worked with local charities to create safe havens to help to take youngsters off the streets and to develop opportunities for the police and others to work with them constructively. We have one safe haven in the Quinton area of south Birmingham. The police officers I speak to are positive about the value of that work. They intend to create a network of havens, but now we might be fighting to prevent the closure of the one that already exists.

In some parts of Birmingham, the authorities have made good use of money available from pots such as the working neighbourhoods fund and safer city partnerships. They use that funding with the police to tackle antisocial behaviour, to reduce gang activity and to act on neighbourhood tensions and intergenerational conflicts. Bodies such as the centre for conflict resolution have been part of that, but what is their future as their partners find their budgets slashed?

At least three youth groups in Selly Oak are expressing concern that the work they do with the police is at risk. The 641 group might have to close, and the Den and St Mary’s youth group are also in a precarious position. Yesterday, I received quite a sad letter from two young men in my constituency—Kieran Greenway and Tom O’Rielly—who wanted me to know that they had started a petition to try to stop the closure of their youth club: Masefield youth club. They feel that the club is teaching them about co-operation and teamwork. It is providing assistance in their search for work or training opportunities, which is no mean task for a young person in Birmingham at the moment. The club encourages them to look at their own behaviour. It helps to divert them from trouble and from being blamed for causing trouble. It also reduces the chance that they might be drawn into acts of vandalism or exposed to violence and drugs, or that they might develop relationships with the police that are wholly hostile and confrontational. They want to keep their club in their area because they do not have to travel far to get there and, as a result, they are less likely to be exposed to street crime. Violence and robbery are real problems for many young people these days, and those under 25 are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators.

For a big city, Birmingham does not do that well in youth provision, although I pay tribute to the countless dedicated individuals who give up their time to help and support our young people. They are part of the Prime Minister’s big society, but they are fighting a very tough battle and they increasingly think that the little support that does exist is being steadily removed.

Birmingham city council’s own overview and scrutiny committee recommended in its November 2006 report that decent youth services required an average spend of £100 to £110 per youngster per year. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), the spend is about £60. In Selly Oak, it is about £45, and in the constituency of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), it is about £30.

Our young people are already being short-changed. They need people to advise them on the dangers of smoking and to provide honest advice on relationships and sexual behaviour. They need to know about the risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. They need places to go where they can feel safe and form relationships with adults that are not destructive and exploitative. The police play a crucial role in supporting many of those services. We should not overlook the superb work they do in partnership with others.

Police cuts do not affect only the elderly, home owners and businesses, all of whom have reason to fear the scale of cuts in the west midlands. They also affect youngsters who deserve the chance to develop decent relations with the police, who need access to challenging activities to absorb their energy and exuberance, who come from violent homes or who have no home, and who want to feel safe and deserve a chance like everyone else. Now is not the time to reduce support for young people. Future generations deserve better from us.

I am sure that that is what the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), now Minister for Universities and Science, had in mind when he talked in his excellent book “The Pinch” about the contract across generations and the responsibilities of the baby boomer generation to the subsequent generation. We need to recognise the important role that the police can play and not treat our young people as voiceless individuals—those without a vote who can be left at the bottom of the pecking order when these cuts are imposed.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing the debate. I am delighted to be discussing these issues with him once again—I think for the third time today. I have also met him to discuss the funding of West Midlands police, and I know that he speaks with genuine concern, passion and interest about the subject, which is also motivated by the interests of his constituents and by wanting the best possible police service in his constituency and more widely in the west midlands. That is an ambition that the Government share. It is the first duty of the Government—of any Government—to ensure that the public are safe, and it is important to us all that we have an efficient and effective police service. However, the Government also have to deal with the deficit. The hon. Gentleman recognised that in his comments. We can disagree about the pace at which the deficit is being dealt with, but Government Members argue that it is essential that it is dealt with as fast as we are proposing.

Nevertheless, I think that both sides agree that the police would have to make savings irrespective of how fast that deficit was reduced, and there is indeed agreement on both sides that the police can make substantial savings, so what we have is a discussion about the scale of those savings and how they can be delivered in a way that does not affect or damage the service that people are entitled to expect in their homes, in their workplace and on the streets. I believe that it will be possible for police forces across the country, including the West Midlands police, to restructure, make savings and drive down costs in a way that will enable them to deal with the reductions in grant that we have had to announce, without producing a service that is worse for the public. We are asking the police to make savings to meet a challenging funding settlement. We have always said that it would be challenging; it was announced in the spending review that the central Government grant to police forces is reducing by 20% in real terms over four years.

Not every force is affected in the same way, because the amount of resource that is available to forces depends on how much they raise from council tax payers. Every force raises some money from council tax payers. On average, that is about a quarter of the funding that they receive, so it is a highly significant share. The West Midlands force receives the second lowest amount from the council tax payer, a point that has been well made by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. That means that the 20% reduction in real terms is more challenging for West Midlands than for other forces.

As I explained to the Home Affairs Committee today, we looked closely at whether it would be right or possible to adjust the grant reduction to take into account the fact that some forces, such as the West Midlands force, raise less from their precept, but there were a number of objections to that. One is that by doing so, we would be penalising council tax payers in other areas who already pay far more for their policing services and have had a big increase in council tax over previous years. That would be unfair. Also, by subsidising forces, including large forces such as West Midlands, in that way, we would be asking other forces to take a larger cut in central grant than 20%. They would have regarded that as very unfair.

It seems right and fair to treat all forces in the same way and ask that they deal with a 20% reduction in real terms. The implications of that are not the same in cash terms. The cash reduction for forces in the first year is 5.1%. In the second year it is 6.7% on average. Taking account of the specific grants that are added, the average reduction is 4% in the first year, 5% in the second, 2% in the third and 1% in the fourth. Those are cash figures and do not take into account inflation, but they illustrate the fact that although these are challenging reductions, they are manageable, provided that considerable savings can be achieved.

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary says that forces together can save more than £1 billion a year—that is some 12% of their funding from central Government—while protecting front-line services. They can achieve that by redesigning their services, and specifically by making changes in their back and middle offices, including by outsourcing. That has happened to differing degrees across forces, but the West Midlands police are now looking at such a radical service redesign.

I met the chief constable again today. Indeed, I have just been with him, discussing these very issues. The kinds of project that the force is considering are those that would save large sums of money as it attempts to meet the budget reductions, but I do not believe that those changes would mean a reduction in service that would be felt by the public.

The Government have never been able to give a guarantee about police numbers, and nor were the previous Government. We recognise that police forces are having to institute a recruitment freeze and that some forces, including West Midlands police, are using the A19 procedure so that police officers who have reached 30 years of service retire. There will be reductions in the size of police work forces, and that is true for West Midlands police. However, that is not the same as saying that there will necessarily be a reduction in the quality of service for the public. The task for chief constables and their managers in the police force, supported by their policy authorities and the Government, is to find ways to drive the kind of service redesign that will mean that the public still see their police officers on the streets and still receive a good response from them and that the police are still able to engage in the kind of partnership activity that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, which is so important in dealing with youth crime.

In addition to the savings that the inspectorate of constabulary identified, we believe that further savings could be made by police forces. I rehearsed some of those briefly with the Home Affairs Committee today and will be happy to do so again. For instance, we think that procurement of non-IT goods and services could save another £200 million a year, bearing in mind that police authorities currently spend £2.8 billion a year on equipment, goods and services. We also think that savings from IT will be possible if police forces collaborate. We have a new approach to procuring and managing IT. There are 2,000 IT systems between the 43 forces, employing around 5,000 staff. The general view in the service is that savings will be possible by managing that better, and the Government are determined to help drive that.

Furthermore, we have set up an independent review of pay and conditions under Tom Winsor, the former rail regulator, and it will produce its first report shortly. That will advise us on the right and proper balance between pay and conditions and whether we have the right arrangements in relation, for instance, to overtime, special priority payments and such matters. That will enable us to ensure that we have an affordable service, but also one that fairly remunerates officers, who do such an important job, recognising that they cannot strike and that many do a difficult and often dangerous job. We await Tom Winsor’s report and will then advise on our position. Any changes that might be made, including the possibility of a two-year pay freeze, which would also save significant sums of money for police forces and which we expect the rest of the public sector to undergo, would have to be agreed by the police negotiating board.

Despite the fact that we expect the overall size of the police work force to be reduced, including in the west midlands, we are absolutely determined to protect front-line services.

[Steve McCabe]

I recognise the difficult job that the Minister has. Does he have any plans to issue guidance or advice to the police on the significance of young people when considering their budgets? That group cannot vote and does not have a voice in the same way as adults, and that is part of the purpose of raising the matter.

[Nick Herbert]

I was going to move on to young people. I have no specific plans to issue that kind of guidance, partly because I do not think that I need to persuade chief officers or police forces about the importance of such work. They know that the significant investment that has been made in the development of neighbourhood policing and the growth of partnership working, whereby police officers are engaged with local authorities in crime reduction measures, particularly those affecting young people, has been a really important move. It has helped to reduce crime and to build public confidence, and my understanding is that chief officers, including Chris Sims, the chief constable of West Midlands police, are committed to it.

We need to send a message to local authorities. They of course face equally challenging reductions in funding, but, as they too have to take very difficult decisions on how to make savings, it is important that we remind them that community safety is one of their statutory responsibilities, and that the partnership work that we have seen between local authorities and the police locally has helped to make communities safer and must continue.

As local authorities consider how to achieve those aims, we want to ensure that local partnerships have a purpose, that they are non-bureaucratic and that they do not waste time. They should not simply involve meetings between council officials and police officers; they should be places of real action-orientated policing, with a strong focus on preventing crime and all the measures that we know to be successful, particularly in youth services.

I pay tribute to the West Midlands police and its partners in the community safety partnership for their work in tackling youth crime and violence in Birmingham. Birmingham has worked closely with the Government on a number of programmes to tackle youth crime and violence, and the city pioneered the use of civil injunctions to tackle gang violence, an approach that was subsequently enshrined in law and will go live on 31 January. This year the Home Office will provide Birmingham with £350,000 for work to tackle youth crime, in addition to £85,000 for work to tackle youth violence. So we are doing what we can.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to all the people who work in Birmingham and elsewhere to prevent and tackle youth crime and violence: local communities, police officers, police community support officers, youth offending teams and others. The Government’s aspirations for policing in the west midlands are the same. The chief constable could not have put it better when he said on 11 January:

“My task is to protect delivery at all costs, to protect the frontline, to protect neighbourhood teams which have been such a success, to keep our ability to deliver the policing people want.”

We share that ambition.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s feeling on the importance of victim personal statements. In the cases that he describes of victims being defamed in mitigation, it is important that victim personal statements are properly made and responsibly reported. We are doing our best to encourage that and are considering how we can ensure that such statements become a more usual practice.

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

Does the Secretary of State share my concern that the police and the CPS too readily recommend bail for those who are accused of domestic violence and related intimidation, thus disadvantaging the victims and their families right at the start of the process?

[Mr Clarke]

These are all difficult matters of judgment. Obviously, many important considerations must be borne in mind when deciding whether to recommend or grant bail, including any further risk to the alleged victims of the offences. It is difficult for Ministers or Parliament to lay down hard-and-fast rules when the people involved are fully aware of the need to protect victims from harm while proceedings are pending.

Police Funding

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

The Home Affairs Committee has already heard from Chief Constable Sims of West Midlands police. It organised a seminar in Cannock Chase, which is not a million miles from my hon. Friend’s constituency, where those concerns were raised. The problem is that individual police forces are currently unable to tell us precisely what effect the cuts will have locally. We will have to wait for the publication of the settlement, which we anticipate in early December. When the Minister speaks, I am sure he will tell us precisely when the provisional police settlements will be announced and placed before the House. He is smiling, so perhaps he will announce the figures today and we can question him on them. I am sure that we will hear soon. Until we do, we will not know precisely what is happening.

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

Apart from the cuts, which will reduce the overall number of police, I understand that the CSR will mean a freeze on recruitment, the likely application of regulation A19, which will get rid of the more experienced officers, and a freeze on pay. Do they sound like the conditions for a highly motivated, well performing police force?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend asks almost a rhetorical question to which the answer must be, “No—people will not be motivated if those cuts take place,” but he is right to raise those concerns. That is why this debate is important. The Home Affairs Committee is of course aware of the deep concern in the west midlands, which is demonstrated by the number of west midlands MPs in the Chamber this afternoon.

A number of police forces have already issued statements on how the CSR will affect them. In a statement on 22 November, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police and the treasurer of the Greater Manchester Police Authority said:

“Final spending details are not expected until the end of November or early December but if the headline reductions in spending totals for the Police Service are ultimately reflected in GMP’s Formula Grant and Specific Grants, the Force and Police Authority will need to find savings of £134m over the four year period…Savings of £52m will need to be found in 2011/12.”

They estimate in their report that GMP will lose approximately 2,950 posts from a total of 12,000 over the four-year period, and BBC News has reported that 1,387 officers and 1,557 civilian posts could go in Greater Manchester.

Northumbria police also issued a statement, saying that the likely impact of the cuts would be the loss of 450 members of the civilian staff out of a total of 2,500. As my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) said, it looks as though 2,000 jobs will be lost in the West Midlands police force, including 1,050 police officers over the four-year period.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is my turn to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills)—the sequence is normally the other way around—and I am very pleased to do so.

I recognise that the Minister has a tough job on his hands. Although I do not agree with a number of his proposals, I accept that his instincts are to try to make the police more efficient and to achieve a better level of performance with the resources he has. His difficulty is that the Home Office did rather badly out of the recent settlement. It is evident that, while other Cabinet Ministers went to bat for their Departments and secured good deals, the Home Secretary did not achieve quite as much. We must now live with the consequences of that. I genuinely and sincerely fear that crime will rise and that we will have terrible difficulties in some of our major cities in trying to combat the particular types of crime that we have been able to bear down on so successfully in recent years.

I do not oppose the Minister’s ambitions to achieve efficiencies and use more modern methods. In fact, I agree that change is needed. I support the better use of IT and better procurement, and I believe there is a clear argument for the police shift system to be changed, which would release more officers. We argue about the statistics—the Minister is very keen to gloat about the 11% figure—but the reality is that the police shift system is part of the problem, and I am in favour of changing that.

I welcome civilianisation where it frees police to do policing jobs. However, such an approach means there can be no benefit from the mass sacking of civilians. That is the conundrum. If civilianisation is a good process because it frees police officers to carry out policing functions, it logically follows that the mass sacking of civilians will mean that police officers are taken off front-line functions and sent back to doing civilian tasks. The Minister will have to address that problem. It is likely—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made this point—that the initial response of police chiefs will be to sack civilian staff, which will impact on front-line policing. As they struggle to continue to make the budget match up, they will be forced to consider how to sack police officers. The easiest way to do that will be to apply regulation A19, which will mean that some of our more experienced and senior officers will have to go. We will have the double effect of losing civilian staff while officers are taken off the street to do their work and, simultaneously, losing senior and experienced officers.

As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), it seems that that will happen when there is also a freeze on recruitment and a freeze on pay. Those are not the conditions in which we can expect to get the best out of people, or motivate them to embrace change and improve performance; they are the conditions most likely to produce exactly the opposite effect.

I am particularly worried about the west midlands, because our gearing ratio means that we are highly dependent on grant. Earlier today, we met the Minister to discuss that very subject. If we experience a uniform cut in grant without any changes to the damping regime, we will lose out unfairly as a result of an exercise that means we must forgo money and resources, which will be transferred to other police areas. We will have to forgo those resources so that the council tax precept can be kept down elsewhere in the country.

That is a very good argument for what the Treasury want to achieve, and for what the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government might want to achieve. However, it is not an argument that someone who is worried about law and order and police resources should be too willing to embrace. Even at this stage, the Minister should consider whether he still has time to go back to his friends in the Treasury, explain the dilemma and see whether they can help him out of the hole that has been dug for him.

Project Paragon in the west midlands has shown that successful efficiency and reorganisation measures can be taken. However, such measures take time to deliver. Project Paragon cannot be turned on and off like a tap. If such things are to be done successfully, they need a long lead-in time. It takes a long time to deliver efficiencies. One of the by-products of such a change is that crime may rise during the reorganisation period, and there is some evidence in the west midlands to show that that is happening. I see that the Minister is nodding, because I think he also accepts that that is the case.

My concern about these very substantial front-loaded cuts is that such a reorganisation will occur far too fast in forces all over the country, at the very time when we are gearing up for major events, such as the Olympics. That is not something that we should be remotely complacent about. It screams out for re-examination, because the obvious dangers are right in front of us. We still have time to look into this issue, but if we delay too long, things will be upon us and our forces will be in chaos at the very time when demand for policing is at its highest.

I agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. My view is simple: law and order always has to be our No. 1 priority. I genuinely feel that the Government have got the balance wrong. I am delighted that they have selected areas of other budgets that they feel should be protected, but there are times when I would like to hear a more convincing case for those decisions. However, I am disappointed that so little emphasis seems to be placed on law and order. Yesterday we detected the dangerous cocktail of police numbers dropping, crime rising and the courts prevented from sending offenders to prison when that is exactly where they should be, along with a promise of community punishments, albeit without the resources to make them work. That is a recipe for problems.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Gentleman makes an assertion about allowing offenders to get away, but between 2007 and 2010, under the previous Government, some 80,000 prisoners were let out of prison early. Surely that was completely unacceptable, and if the hon. Gentleman’s previous comment is right, he should accept that that was wrong.

[Steve McCabe]

Actually, the reality is that under the Labour Government there was a huge rise in prison numbers. It is true that some people were allowed out one month early, but the Justice Secretary proposed yesterday that there should be a threshold in order to reduce the numbers who go to prison in the first place, which means that the courts will be hampered. Indeed, he went on to say that his preference was that people should serve half the sentence in prison and half in the community. I should tell the hon. Gentleman that his constituents will find that much less acceptable than the situation when we were in power. If he does not believe me, I would be happy to go with him to his constituency and talk to them about it, because from what my constituents tell me, I am pretty certain that I am right about that.

[Rehman Chishti]

The statement by the Secretary of State for Justice was quite clear: those who commit crime should be punished with the efficient force of the criminal justice system, and that includes going to prison. Can the hon. Gentleman show where in the Secretary of State’s statement it said that they should not be sent to prison?

[Steve McCabe]

I can show the hon. Gentleman where in the statement the Secretary of State gave the estimate for what he expected the reduction in the number of people going to prison to be. He stood at that Dispatch Box and said it, and everyone who was in the Chamber heard it—unless they have selective hearing.

I shall now return to what I was saying. There is a difficult balance. Perhaps the cuts are just too much, and the Home Office has got a particularly poor deal. I was surprised to discover, from the evidence that the permanent secretary to the Home Office gave to the Home Affairs Committee, that the Department has not carried out any research into the impact of the cuts on crime. That came from the very same permanent secretary who three years ago ordered a report on the potential impact of a recession on crime. It seems slightly strange that the man who feared then that a recession could lead to a rise in crime, and who said that we should investigate the potential outcomes, does not seem remotely troubled that a background of massive cuts and far too rapid reorganisation could have a similar effect. Perhaps it is just as well that he is planning to retire.

[Keith Vaz]

The point to emphasise is that the outcome of the research commissioned by the permanent secretary for Jacqui Smith when she was Home Secretary was that crime would rise during a recession, and that was assuming a level playing field for the number of police officers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that point. He is absolutely right.

I have one last point to make. As I said at the outset, I am in favour of the Minister’s plans to try to modernise the police force and get greater efficiency. I genuinely wish him well, and I think that some of the things that he talks about are things that we should try to do. I also think that they need a longer lead-in time. Time will tell who is right about that. However, there is one priority that I would not adopt at the moment, especially against the background of the cuts and the reorganisation and efficiency changes that we are about to experience. I would not totally change the management and accountability structure of the police at the same time. It seems ludicrous that we should be subjected to the idea of elected police and crime commissioners now. It might be a good idea—although I think that the Minister is wrong about that as well—but what on earth is the pressing need for something that will have a further destabilising effect on the police, at the very time when they have all those other issues to contend with? If the proposal is a good idea, surely there is plenty of time to discuss it, and to pilot it and see what the consequences—the benefits and downsides—are.

[Guy Opperman]

In 2008, when the previous Government made the proposal and were considering it in their draft legislative programme, was my hon. Friend in favour of it or against it?

[Steve McCabe]

I am glad to hear that the hon. Gentleman is now my hon. Friend. I do not know whether that means that he shares some of my concerns about policing, or whether I have at least one ally on the Government Benches who will talk to the Minister about such issues. Actually, it was never the Labour Government’s proposal to have directly elected police commissioners, so no, I was never in favour of that.

This is not the time for that experiment. The Minister has enough on his plate. He needs to get on and get the best deal and the best arrangements that he can from his Treasury colleagues, in order to prevent some of our worst fears from being realised. He would be better off concentrating his energy on that. We can deal with the question of police commissioners another time. What is proposed sounds like a Government in too much of a hurry, with too few resources and too few of the right priorities. If the Minister gets this wrong, not only will he suffer personally in a ministerial capacity, but our constituents throughout the country will suffer as a consequence of reckless behaviour that damages the police.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

On that point, does the hon. Gentleman think that individually elected police and crime commissioners all pursuing their own individual political agendas is more or less likely to encourage force co-operation?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which I think makes a strong point. It has been put—no doubt by him, by me and by others—to the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, who is well aware of it. The legislation will clearly need to set out the requirement for police and crime commissioners to collaborate and co-ordinate activities with others. When they take on this role, they will also have to bear efficiency savings in mind, so making them will also be in their interests. We are watching that issue closely, and we will want to ensure that elected police and crime commissioners understand the need to co-ordinate effectively with their neighbours.

I believe that the report by HMIC, the Audit Commission and the Wales Audit Office provides a substantial body of evidence to support the case that opportunities are available to make significant efficiency savings. I think that they can be achieved, so long as those at the head of the forces provide the necessary leadership to drive the changes through.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

In the current economic climate, the police must play their part and do more with less. That is not an unreasonable request. The private and public sectors have had to make significant reductions and changes in working practices. Opposition Members constantly cite cuts of 20%, but taken over five years that works out as a 4% cut each year over the next four years, taking into consideration the fact that some funds can be raised under the local council tax precept.

There have been references to cuts in front-line officers, and I would like to offer some solutions. Politicians often come up with problems and talk about them in this Chamber for many hours, but they do not always come up with solutions. It concerns me when I hear chief constables and Opposition Members talking about cuts to the number of front-line officers.

Since I was elected for Weaver Vale, which is a mid-Cheshire seat, I have spent as much time as I can with the Cheshire constabulary, going out on night shifts in Runcorn on a Friday night and, last Friday night, in Northwich.

[Steve McCabe]

I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s comment about a rise in the precept. Obviously it varies across the country. What level of increase does he think he would be able to persuade people in his part of the world to accept?

[Graham Evans]

It varies from community to community. When I was a local councillor, there was much concern about antisocial behaviour. Despite many attempts to get the local police to spend more time on the street corners, as there was concern about youths allegedly causing trouble, they could never afford the time. The parish council made a decision significantly to increase the precept to pay for the new police community support officers. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise figure, but it could be significant if that community decided to increase the precept to allow a dedicated community support officer for that particular area.

The police do their best to meet the public’s expectation of having officers on the beat, but no police force can have officers on street corners every Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. The public expect to see officers on the beat, walking around, but that is not always physically possible. Credit should be given to the previous Government for the way they introduced police community support officers, because they made a difference to the perception as well as the quality of life of many citizens. Local communities can get together to pay for PCSOs.

Front-line cuts have been mentioned many times. If there is a freeze on recruitment and pay, over a few years there will be a reduction in the number of regular police officers. However, I do not hear the role of special constables mentioned in this House. I can only refer to Cheshire constabulary, but for many years the chief constables of Cheshire have spent a lot of time training and recruiting special constables.

Last Friday we had a particularly long and frosty evening. A dozen officers were on duty from 7 o’clock in the evening to 3 o’clock in the morning, half of them special constables. I was a special constable in the 1980s, so before I went out I tried on my old uniform. It fitted where it touched, so I quickly put it back in its suitcase and back in the attic. Before I went out, I looked at the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and various police reforms that were made in the ’80s so that I could prepare myself for what is going on in the 21st century.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the professionalism of the special constables. Half a dozen were on duty on that evening. Each one is a volunteer and an unpaid volunteer, which is not often mentioned. I hear Opposition Members talking about the big society, and there is no better example of it than the special constabulary. It comprises ordinary members of the public serving their community and they are unpaid. That is not to say that members of the special constabulary do not have the ambition to join the regular force—they do.

My point is that we have a wonderful opportunity to recruit special constables at this difficult time, when there is a freeze on regular recruitment. The training for specials is exactly the same as that given to regular policemen. If an individual wants to join a police force, they can join the special constabulary, although they will not be paid, and can train over the next two or three years while there is a recruitment freeze. During those two or three years, they can learn the ropes and how to become full-time policemen. I am sure that when they submit their CV and application to become a regular police officer in two or three years’ time, their experience will be taken into account by the chief constable. That would enable the communities I serve and represent to have front-line policing, because special constables carry warrants and can make arrests. Indeed, they can do everything that regular police officers can do.

On Friday night, I went out with the police in a minibus, in a Panda car and on foot—walking the main streets of Northwich. Policing is not straightforward. I often hear comments from the public and Members about wanting officers not in cars but on the beat, as though one could simply wave a magic wand to achieve that. If the police are to serve the whole community, there will be times when they need to be in patrol cars and times when they need to be on the beat.

[Steve McCabe]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that special constables make an important contribution; I have seen it for myself when I have been out on patrol with them, so I totally agree. However, they are additional officers and the average borough commander cannot place them on the rota because he is never sure how many might be available. There is a difficulty with the suggestion that the hon. Gentleman seems to be coming close to making which is that the specials should substitute for the officers who have been lost through cuts. If that approach were taken, it would become harder to plan basic policing operations because the commander would not know how many specials would be available at any given time.

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I agree with him, but the situation varies from force to force. The leadership and management of individual forces are important; best practice has been mentioned in that regard. Cheshire constabulary has invested a lot of time in special constables because the force is relatively small, and I respectfully suggest that other forces—I am not thinking of any particular force, but perhaps the metropolitan and larger forces—could learn a thing or two about recruiting specials.

The hon. Gentleman says that the officer in charge of his constabulary is never sure how many specials will be on duty at a certain time, but this comes down to leadership and management. The senior officers in my constituency know exactly how many special constables will be there on the all-important Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, which is when additional help is strongly appreciated. I have spoken to special constables who have ambitions to become regular policemen. They work during the day and volunteer their time in the evenings, including Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I do not say that they could be a long-term replacement, but merely point out that in the short term I do not accept what I hear chief constables say about front-line cuts in officers. There are creative ways in which specials can be used as a solution in the short term, rather than talking about headline cuts.

PCSOs also play an important role and really involve themselves in the community. I have heard worrying stories about many PCSOs being lost across the country, but they can be paid for through local precepting in town and parish councils. I also find that moneys are held in town and parish council accounts for emergencies. I encourage all chief constables and senior officers to look around their communities to see whether any funds have been siphoned or hidden away for a rainy day. I get very concerned when I hear about those vital officers being made redundant, because I do not accept that it is necessary, especially in the short term.

When I went out on Friday night and in Runcorn previously, I was struck by the fact that Cheshire force sends its police out singly. They go out on their own but have significant and efficient back-up available at a moment’s notice, which means that there are many police officers on public view. Earlier, I heard it said that 11% of officers are available at any one time, but in Cheshire a significant number of officers are out on the beat working on their own, and support is there for them very quickly if need be.

Cutting the amount of police time spent on paperwork has not really been mentioned. A previous Prime Minister talked about being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. One thing that we could do as a society and as a country is to tackle the abuse of alcohol. Virtually every call on Friday evening involved people who were badly intoxicated and reliant on alcohol. They had lost structure in their lives and it was quite pitiful to be called to the streets or their homes to assist them.

I cannot help feeling that local authorities that grant long, late-night licences to clubs in town centres and elsewhere, enabling alcohol to be served at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning, put huge pressures on police authorities and forces. Things might be relatively quiet until 11 o’clock at night, but at 2 o’clock in the morning there is mayhem on the streets with intoxicated people brawling. On Friday night—I was told that it was a relatively quiet night—PC Frost was out in force but there were still several arrests of people fighting in the streets of Northwich. Local authorities have a big role to play and they need to communicate better with the police regarding recommendations on late licensing.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to contribute to this constructive and well-mannered debate. Members on both sides of the House have expressed their genuine concerns in a fairly non-political way.

There has been much speculation today and in the past few weeks about the possible effects of the cuts. It is pure speculation because we still do not know what the individual settlements will be. It is disappointing to Members on the Government side that the Opposition still have not had the good grace to tell us where they would make their cuts. I thought that the answer given by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) when he was pushed on this issue was very interesting. Essentially, he said that he would go back to the Treasury to ask for more money, so perhaps the Opposition do not accept there should be any cuts whatever in policing. It would be interesting if that point were addressed in the winding-up speech.

I want to address an issue at the core of this debate—the effect that the reduction in funding will have on police numbers. I know that that is a totemic issue for the Opposition, and it is easy to understand why, because the Labour Government, in their 13 years in office, were very successful at one thing: persuading this country that only by pouring more money in can we get better results out. That is why the debate about policing has always focused on the number of police rather than what they do all day. [Interruption.] We have a record number—140,000—as someone shouts from a sedentary position, but seemingly, simply because we have record police numbers and PCSOs, Labour Members think we have record effective policing. That is simply not an equation that works.

Labour Members do not care whether police officers are on patrol, filling in forms or responding to jobs. They seem incapable of acknowledging that having more and more police officers doing more and more administrative and bureaucratic tasks does not mean better policing. Sadly for the Opposition, the debate has moved on. They need not take my word for it; they can take that of someone who knows more about policing and fighting crime than all of us in the Chamber put together—Bill Bratton, who was chief of police of the Los Angeles police department, of New York city and of Boston. He is famous across the world for putting the broken windows theory into practice. He introduced the CompStat system of tracking crimes, which is still in use today and massively reduced crime in New York city, where he devolved decision making to precinct level and got rid of a backlog of 50,000 unserved warrants. When he was chief of police in Los Angeles, crime within that city dropped for six consecutive years. In 2007, the LA police commission reappointed Bratton to a second five-year term, which was the first time it had made such a reappointment in almost 20 years.

It is fair to say that that guy knows what he is on about, and here is what he said to the Home Affairs Committee on 30 November. The Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East, said:

“There is a debate at the moment, obviously because of the current economic climate that will result in the numbers of police officers in a local area being reduced. Do you think there is any correlation between the numbers of officers in a particular area and the level of crime?”

Bill Bratton replied:

“As a police chief for many, many years, I would always like to have more police, but the reality is it is not just numbers but, more importantly, what you do with them. More is fine, but if they’re just standing around or if they’re not focused on issues of concern to the public, then those numbers are not… going to achieve what you would hope to achieve, which is improve public safety and reduce crime.”

[Steve McCabe]

It is only fair to say that Bill Bratton went on to caution the Select Committee against drawing too many conclusions from the American experience, because policing is organised very differently in the United States.

[Mr Burley]

I shall give another quote from what Bill Bratton said to us:

“So, I had 38,000 police officers in New York City. In Los Angeles I had 9,000. Los Angeles: 500 square miles, worst gang problem in America, 4 million residents. New York: 38,000 police officers, 300 square miles, 8 million residents, a drug crime problem. To have the equivalent of what I had in New York City in Los Angeles, I would need 18,000 police officers, I only had 9,000 but, over a seven-year period, every year crime went down in Los Angeles… the public perception of police and their effectiveness improved”,

which reinforced

“the adage: it’s not so much the numbers but how you use them, how you inspire them, how you direct them and what their priorities are.”

If it is not a matter of numbers, it is about what the police do all day, and the fact is that in this country the police spend a huge amount of time filling in forms. On 15 March 2007, I went out on the beat in Paddington with the Met, one of the more advanced forces in this country. This is what Met police have to fill in for a single domestic violence incident: a124D paper booklet in the victim’s house; an evidence and actions booklet, which is the same as an old pocketbook, but with structured questions; a custody record, in the station if someone is arrested, with the same details as are in the EAB, which they give to the custody sergeant to rekey into his computer system; a CRISS report, which is an electronic crime report filled in by the officer at the station and that is used for Home Office statistics; a MERLIN report, which involves a national computer system with details of vulnerable children from domestic violence backgrounds—the same details as in the first two forms; a CRIMINT report, which is a Met police-wide intelligence system; and the case papers—that is, the MG forms, which are Word documents that get sent to the Crown Prosecution Service for court. It is not uncommon in the Met and other police forces for officers to be off for the rest of the shift following one domestic violence incident arrest. That is what they are spending their time doing—this mad bureaucracy and paperwork. It is not about the number of police officers; it is about what they do all day on their shifts.

As we have heard recently, Home Office figures have revealed that officers now spend more time on paperwork than on patrol—just 14% of their time on patrol compared with 20% on paperwork. That is why I am delighted that this coalition, like Bill Bratton, is dealing with the reality of the cuts by focusing not on police numbers, but on what the police do all day. Only by clearing away this bureaucracy and these inefficient, wasteful practices will we get the police service that this country deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

The police must pay their share in reducing the deficit. Contrary to what the Opposition suggest—that a poor deal was secured for the police—the deal was rather better than expected in relation to non-protected Departments.

It is important to point out that the fact that the reduction in central Government spending on the police is 20% over four years—that is clear from the settlement—does not mean a 20% reduction in the amount of money that forces will have over the period. That is an immensely important point, but I am not sure that the Opposition have fully grasped it. There is a straightforward reason: forces do not raise all their money from central Government—on average, they raise getting on for a third of their money from central Government, or nearly £1 in every £3—and the money that they raise locally is not being cut.

As has been pointed out, that means that if we assume both the OBR forecast of reasonable rises in the precept based on—[Interruption.] The OBR forecast is based on the historic trend and the precept freeze, which the Government are funding next year. That reduces the cut in police force funding over the four-year period to 14% in real terms. The Opposition must explain why they believe that the 12% cut that they concede they would have made to policing, based on HMIC advice, would leave forces strong and secure—I assume that they would not otherwise have proposed that—but that a 14% cut is Armageddon, with all the consequences that the hon. Member for Gedling says will flow?

The difference between a 12% cut in real terms and a 14% cut at the end of the four-year period is £200 million, and the Government are making specific additional proposals, to which my hon. Friends referred, including the review of pay and conditions, which is being set up by Tom Winsor. We also expect the police to take part in the two-year pay freeze, subject to the agreement of the police negotiating board, which will close that £200 million gap. Labour Members simply have not answered the question. Why do they feel able to go around campaigning on, and scaremongering about, the impact of the spending reductions that forces are being asked to make? They are clearly and simply seeking to make political capital out of the situation, yet they would have cut the police budget themselves, in precisely the same order of magnitude as that which the Government have announced—the availability of resources to the police would have been precisely the same. They are perpetrating on the public a great fraud about their position.

[Steve McCabe]

I do not think that the Minister is deliberately trying to mislead the House, but is it not fair to say that the 12% cut that the former Home Secretary mentioned would be subject to exactly the same precept conditions, so it would have been reduced in the same way as he has reduced his 20% cut to 14%? He has therefore inadvertently misled the House on that point. Of course, he also completely misleads the House in relation to the west midlands—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may disagree with the Minister, but he cannot accuse him of misleading the House because he is using figures that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with.

[Steve McCabe]

I am happy to apologise. I was suggesting that the Minister was inadvertently misleading the House by quoting figures that do not stand up to scrutiny.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I heard the hon. Gentleman very clearly and he said it twice. I am glad that he has clarified that he believed that it was not deliberate.

Rehabilitation and Sentencing

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with honesty in sentencing—I have always supported that idea—and we will certainly be addressing the way in which it is explained by a judge in court, so that it is clear and comprehensible to the public. That includes explaining the term of imprisonment and the term of licence that follows—what is currently called “serving half the sentence”. The first half is in prison; the second half is subject to recall to prison, but it is served on licence out in the community. To turn the full term into imprisonment, which no one has ever done, would merely involve doubling the sentence for every prisoner. The financial objections to that are only the first ones that I would raise.

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

Surely the courts must always determine when a custodial sentence is required. The public will not understand what sounds like the Secretary of State saying that he or the Treasury is setting out to constrain that decision making.

[Mr Clarke]

With great respect, I am obviously being particularly obscure today, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman; indeed, I was saying precisely the opposite of what he described. We have spent the last 10 years or so believing that sections of statute—some of which read rather like local government circulars—are required in order to tell the judges what to do in individual cases, and that we should prescribe exactly what they do, according to some careful analysis. The judges complain like mad about the incomprehensibility of the legislation they are supposed to be applying. I firmly agree with the hon. Gentleman that, by and large, judges are in the best position to judge the appropriate way of dealing with each case and each offender, just as juries are the right people to decide guilt or innocence in serious cases. Parliament must stop trying to second-guess and introduce rules that we believe, with the best of intentions, cover all cases but which will not cover the absolutely amazing variety of circumstances that tend to accompany any particular category of crime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am, of course, shocked to hear of the outrageous nature of the crime in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We have to make sure that all our sentencing proposals give the courts all the powers they need. It is a question of how to set out the severity of the appropriate sentences, at the same time leaving the court in the end to decide on the exact sentence, based on the circumstances of the case and the offender. Although the recent habit—particularly under the last Government, who produced 21 different criminal justice Bills—was to keep producing very elaborate rules, in my experience judges do not need to be told that an offence of the kind described by my hon. Friend deserves the full force of the law and the severe punishment that the public would undoubtedly expect for such a case.

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

Is not the vote for prisoners a dyed-in-the-wool Lib Dem policy? Is that not the real reason why the Secretary of State will not stand up for us and tell the European Court that the ruling is simply unacceptable to the British people and the vast majority of our MPs?

[Mr Clarke]

It is not a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative policy, it is true, but it should be the policy of every responsible Member of the House to accept that we have to comply with a judgment of the European Court, because nobody is advocating withdrawing from the convention. The hon. Gentleman’s party accepted that. His party never repudiated the judgment; it always accepted that it was going to have to give votes to prisoners. It wasted five years and two consultation exercises, however, because it was incapable of taking a decision in advance of an election—or at all, as it happened.

Policing (West Midlands)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on securing this important debate. I know perfectly well that the aim of the coalition—its ideological ambition—is to achieve a smaller state and that it has concluded that it can do that by cutting deeply into public services and blaming the previous Government for that reckless gamble. I understand that. The reality is that the people of the west midlands will deliver the final verdict on the coalition’s plans, but my fear is that we may witness a law-and-order disaster and an explosion in crime before the electorate are afforded that opportunity.

I have been involved in policing matters since I first came to the House in 1997. I have always believed that it is the duty of Government to give the police the numbers and the resources to do their job. I am proud of the Labour Government’s record in raising police numbers to record levels and in leaving office with crime lower than it was when we came in. Ours was the first Government to achieve that since the first world war. In addition, like everyone else here, I am proud that 16,000 police community support officers were put on the streets.

I do not know what happened to the review of the future of PCSOs that was to have been conducted by the former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Some people may recall that it was announced with great fanfare at the Police Federation conference last year. I do not know whether it ever reached a conclusion.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

If my hon. Friend wants to know what happened to the right hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that he was demoted.

[Steve McCabe]

Actually, I was referring to the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal to review the future of PCSOs. I do not know whether that reached a conclusion, but the reality is that unless the west midlands force receives the grant necessary to sustain PCSOs, they will disappear from the streets of places such as Selly Oak. We shall suffer the folly of front-loaded cuts, as my hon. Friends have said. We shall see the destruction of a decade of improvements.

We are likely to see two effects on West Midlands police. The funding cuts will result in job losses for civilian staff. It will be called the reverse civilianisation policy. That means that the previous policy of recruiting civilians to perform crucial support but non-direct-policing tasks, thus freeing up police officers to fight crime, will be put into reverse. As a result, civilian staff numbers will fall and officers will be taken off the streets to perform clerical and administrative duties—and that is from a Home Secretary who claims that there is too much bureaucracy and she wants crime fighters rather than form-fillers. People will ring up only to be told that no officer is available; they are all too busy manning the CCTV cameras, typing up reports and answering the phone.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, it will not stop there. As the budget tightens, the chief constable will be forced to pay off some of his older and most experienced officers in a desperate attempt to save money. The West Midlands force risks being reduced to the status of a reactive response unit. Some estimates suggest that we will lose as many as 40 officers per constituency in Birmingham.

Initiatives that are the cornerstone of community-based and partnership policing—the very thing that the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) supports—will be the first to go. Youth programmes that are designed to attract young people to sporting activities, such as those that I have witnessed at Chinn Brook recreation ground, and to prevent them drifting into vandalism and mindless antisocial behaviour will be lost. Local innovations such as police reward cards, which the police have pioneered in the west midlands to engage young people at a level that they appreciate and understand, will go. Social programmes, through which officers have worked with schools such as Kings Heath boys’ school and Highters Heath, Billesley and Hollywood primary schools, will be lost. Finally, as the force shrinks, crime will of course rise.

It is not too late for the Government to rethink their priorities. It is not too late for the coalition to wake up to the enormous gamble that it is about to take with law and order. It is not too late to recognise that having created an age of austerity, the last thing we should do is cut the police. There is still time to accept that the political gamble of police commissioners does not make sense when every spare penny should be used to keep police officers on our streets. Who else would pick this moment to blow £100 million on a reckless political gamble, when we should be trying to keep the force at a strength that will enable it to do its job?

The picture that I have painted is not inevitable, but it will be the inevitable outcome of the decisions that the coalition is taking: it will be the consequence of a Government who, by their choices, have demonstrated that they misunderstand policing. For the sake of our communities in the west midlands, I hope that the Minister will tell us that he is prepared to listen and to think again about the measures that are necessary to preserve high-quality policing in Birmingham and the west midlands.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I will make three brief points before the winding-up speeches.

First, it is easy in debates in the main Chamber, and sometimes in Westminster Hall, to get into political knockabout, where the role of the Opposition is to attack and the role of the Government is to defend, but at the end of which, nothing comes out. It is fair to say that Opposition Members have made political points in this debate—that is unsurprising, given that we are politicians. However, a serious question has been put to the Minister and I do not want to get to the end of the debate without hearing an answer. This question is vital to the service that our constituents receive. Several of my hon. Friends have posed the question, but allow me to pose it again, Mr Brady.

The west midlands is a high-crime area and a deprived area. Because of the structure of police funding, it relies on Government grant to make ends meet to a greater extent than many other parts of the country. It receives £579 million a year from the Treasury. Although we agree with inter-agency working and that policing is about more than numbers, 20% cannot be taken out of the budget without having a serious effect on deprived communities in the west midlands. Does the Minister recognise that problem? Does he think that a 20% cut is the same for Surrey and the west midlands? If so, he needs to say that and the public need to hear him, because they know that it is different. If he recognises that there is a disproportionate effect and that the reality on the ground will be different in the west midlands, we need to know what the Government will do about that. It is not unknown that when budgets are restructured, one should consider using mechanisms such as floors and ceilings in local government spending to ensure that the effects are dampened in certain areas. Will the Government do anything to recognise the specific problems in the west midlands, or will they just say, “It’s 20%, that’s it. It’s up to you to sort it out in your region”? We need to know the answer to those questions at the end of the debate and I hope that the Minister will give it.

My second point follows on from those of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). Actual crime gets to communities, but the fear of crime can sap their confidence and eat away at them. We all know the paradox that the higher one’s fear of being a victim of crime, the more chance one stands of being a victim of crime. As I said earlier, we need to give the chief constable space to recognise the difficult position he is in and to do what he has to do. He will do everything he can to ensure that communities are not scared or worried by what is going on. He is doing everything he can to keep service levels up, but the fear of crime will rise.

One reason for the rise in the fear of crime will be visibility. A great thing about police community support officers is that the police are seen to be on the high streets and in communities talking to people. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) spoke of the importance of intelligence-led policing, but where does the intelligence come from? The best intelligence often comes from informal, chance conversations, which tell the police that so-and-so lives in such a place and that they talk to someone else. That is an important reason to have visibility in service terms, but it also reassures local communities just to see the bobby or the PCSO on the beat.

The dilemma for the police, when faced with such cuts, is whether to maintain that visibility and reassurance or whether to ensure that they are available to respond to incidents that occur. That would probably be done by car because that is the quickest way to get to incidents. That might be the realistic response, but the result would be the loss of local contact on the street and the reassurance that that brings. That worries me. Again, I ask the Minister whether I am right. If I am wrong, he should tell me, but if I am right, what will he do about the situation through the funding for West Midlands police?

My final point is about community engagement, which hon. Members from all parts of the Chamber have said is important. It is important in my area of Northfield, where there is a local strategic partnership. Such partnerships exist across Birmingham with greater or lesser degrees of success. One of the strong elements of our constituency strategic partnership is that we decided at the start that it would be chaired not by a local councillor or politician, as many are, but by the local senior police officer. There have been a number of chairs over the years, and their role has been incredibly positive. They have sometimes brought a reality check to the debate and to discussions on inter-agency working. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) has spoken about local tasking meetings, which have been important in his area. Such local engagement is important.

Although I know the police will do all they can to continue with local engagement, I fear that it will suffer in the face of the coming pressures. When it starts to suffer, we should remember that the cuts in policing do not exist in isolation; they exist at the same time as other agencies that are part of the inter-agency working that Government Members have mentioned also face cuts. For example, Birmingham city council has rightly been criticised over the issue of child protection and safeguarding. Big changes are happening in Birmingham as a result—whether fast or effective enough is another matter. The pressures on the local authority to act are real.

Some of what is being done makes sense. Procedures are being built on procedures, to ensure that some of the real tragedies we have seen in Birmingham do not happen again. However, my worry about that—the relevance to policing will be seen in a minute—is that, in the process, something will be lost when we are only focusing on the crisis: when we are just stopping crisis after crisis. With so much emphasis on putting in place procedures to stop the crises, we will start to lose the low-level stuff, the real preventive stuff.

[Steve McCabe]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about the dangers for child protection work. Is it not also the case that Birmingham has a low-funded youth service, one of the poorest in the country? Exactly his argument about engagement and child protection and safety is our argument for engaging young people and diverting them from crime.

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Such issues interrelate. If we have the children’s services department chasing and trying to prevent the crises—rightly, in many ways—we lose the low-level stuff. If, simultaneously, we are cutting back on the youth service, we will be causing problems. If the local police are under pressure as well, the inter-agency work that all those agencies want to do will start to suffer.

Ultimately, what will suffer is not this or that committee or tasking meeting and whether or not it happens, but the reality of service to our constituents and the people we represent. If we are to do something about that, if we expect Birmingham city council, the police service and others to respond properly, they must be given the chance. I conclude where I started: if they are to be given the chance, we must recognise the specifics of the problems. It does not mean denying the fact that economies must be made, or arguing that somehow, the problems the country faces will just go away; but it does mean recognising that areas such as Birmingham, Coventry and other parts of the west midlands have specific and extreme problems. Those problems, such as getting the youth service properly staffed or the children’s and police services working properly, are interrelated. The idea that, in the middle of that, taking 20% out of the Home Office grant of £579 million will not have a grave impact is simply a cloud cuckoo land idea.

I accept that, when the Minister responds, he will doubtless make his riposte to the political points and say, “The Labour Government did this, and we are going to do that.” However, before he gets to the end of his speech, will he please answer this question: do the Government recognise that there will be a disproportionate effect on the west midlands, yes or no? If the answer is no, is he prepared to say that to the people we represent, as well as to those in the Chamber? If the answer is yes, what will he do about it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend raises an important question, and the Minister might be able to respond shortly.

Let me make one final point about policing in general. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned the politicisation of the police through the madcap scheme of establishing police and crime commissioners in each police force area. That will be done at an estimated cost of at least £50 million, at a time of savage cuts to front-line policing. I ask the Minister to think again, because the scheme seems to enjoy little support.

We heard that the number of police officers in the west midlands has increased from 7,113 to 8,536 since 1997.

[Steve McCabe]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if it is legitimate to have a referendum to determine whether people want directly elected mayors, it would be equally legitimate to ask them whether they would prefer scarce and precious resources to be spent on keeping police officers in their jobs or on electing a highly political animal to dominate the police and change the character of British policing? Would that not be a localism agenda?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Lady is indeed perceptive. There is no commitment to increased police numbers. Why? Because, in the words of the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the note that he left for us, there is no money. [Interruption.] No. Of course we cannot make a commitment to increase police numbers. I am making the point that the hon. Lady cannot make it either, and that in the run-up to the general election the then Home Secretary, now the shadow Chancellor, refused to give a guarantee that police numbers would remain as they were then.

[Steve McCabe]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Ainsworth]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

Yes. I am, I hope, coming to all the points that hon. Members made. I want to address them, but I am making the crucial point that the test of police effectiveness is not just to do with the overall sums of money that are spent, or even the overall numbers of officers. It is what is done with the officers.

The inspectorate made a second crucial point, which is that police forces between them could save more than £1 billion a year by improving the way they work. As the hon. Lady said, that would represent about 12% of their budget, once the ability of forces to raise precept was taken into account. As a result, the cut that we announced would be reduced to an average of 14% in real terms over four years. However, I accept that that is an average figure and that some forces have a greater ability to raise money from precept than others—a point made by the right hon. Member for Coventry North East. I shall come shortly to how we can deal with that.

The figures I have just given leave a funding gap of two percentage points. The matters that the inspectorate report did not cover will also need to be addressed. For example, forces could procure collectively rather than separately, which would save hundreds of millions of pounds; and savings will accrue from the announced two-year pay freeze across the public sector that, subject to the police review board’s agreement, will apply also to police officers. We believe that significant savings can be made by police forces, including by the West Midlands force—that is on top of the Paragon programme, which is already delivering savings—while protecting front-line services and, crucially, the visibility and availability that concern the public.

We heard nothing—literally nothing—from the Opposition about procurement or other areas where savings could be made. They made the simplistic assumption that a reduction in budget was bound to lead to a reduction in the number of officers on the streets or available to the public, but that is an assumption that they should not make.

[Steve McCabe]

If we take what the Minister says at face value—I am prepared to accept that he must be right—will he tell us how many officers we in the west midlands can safely afford to lose before he would be concerned? Will he also answer the point about the disproportionate grant, which all of us have raised?

[Nick Herbert]

I have told Opposition Members of the structure that I wish to apply, and I have said that I am seeking to answer that point.

The deployment of resources is a matter for the chief constable and the police authority. It is not for the Government to decide; it will be the chief constable’s decision. The task now falls on him to drive the savings that are necessary, particularly the savings in the back and middle offices, to ensure that the front line can be protected. I repeat that we believe that it can be.

The crucial point is that we have not yet announced the grants for specific forces. The cut that we announced was therefore an average. Within a few weeks, in early December, I shall announce a provisional grant settlement for each force. In considering the level of grant that should be made available to each force, we will go through the proper processes and take account of things such as damping and the needs of forces. That process is under way, so the sensible points by Opposition Members were well made. However—this is something that Opposition Front Benchers will have to address—if some forces are to be given a degree of protection because they raise less money from council tax than others, two questions arise.

First, why should forces in areas where people are already contributing more through the council tax suffer a bigger cut in Government grant? Why should they be punished by a bigger cut? Secondly, if forces such as the West Midlands police were to be given a smaller than average cut, which is what I think the Opposition are asking for, which forces do they say should be made to suffer a greater than average cut? Will the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North confirm that it is Opposition policy for forces that receive more through the council tax to suffer a bigger than average cut? Will the hon. Lady confirm that now?

The House will have noted the resounding silence, and seen that the hon. Lady’s head is down.

Public Disorder (NUS Rally)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

We are committed to supporting the right of peaceful protest. Everyone in this country is entitled to make their views known by peaceful and democratic means. It was open to students yesterday to hold a lobby of Parliament and contact their MPs, who I am sure, whatever their views, would have listened to their concerns. It is neither necessary nor justifiable for a small minority to resort to any kind of violence, intimidation or criminal damage.

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

I welcome the Minister’s commitment to peaceful protests and demonstrations. Does he share my view that the appropriate sentence for many of these professional thugs and agitators is an exemplary prison sentence? Can he assure me that cost will not be a factor when the courts make their decisions?

[Nick Herbert]

I think that the hon. Gentleman, too, is close to trying to make a political point on the back of these events. My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has made it absolutely clear that prison will continue to be reserved as the appropriate place for serious, violent and repeat offenders. We have no plans to fetter the power of magistrates or sentencers in that respect. The Government want the full force of the law to be brought to bear on those who committed acts of violence yesterday: they should be brought to justice.