Police Funding

Debate between Steve McCabe and Aidan Burley

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Steve McCabe and Aidan Burley

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

There is a principle here, and that is my point. People bought these cards in good faith. It is all very well for other hon. Members to say that it was clear that if the election results went a certain way they would be abolished, but everyone—including the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman), for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and indeed for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—must remember that no one won the last election. The Conservatives did not convince the electorate of the merits of their manifesto, nor did the coalition partners. That is why we have a coalition. The election result was not clear cut and no single party succeeded in convincing the electorate that they had a right to govern by itself. In that context, it would be reasonable to show a bit of humility in the proposals the Government make.

I have no objection to the Government choosing to abolish ID cards, but I do object to them seeking to penalise and punish those who bought cards in good faith. The electorate will remember all these grand speeches saying that those people do not count for anything and the derogatory remarks—although I am sure that they were made in jest—of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. Hon. Members should recognise that those people acted in good faith and it is not appropriate to penalise them.

We do not want to make a massive deal of this, but the Minister has had quite a lot of time to think about it. We are talking about a relatively modest amount of money, but the precedent it would set is very important. If the precedent is set that people will be punished if, after having acted in good faith by doing something that the Government of the day encouraged, it will cause paralysis in many other areas.

[Mr Burley]

The hon. Gentleman said that this proposal would cost a relatively modest amount, but does he have any idea how much it would be? The current cost of maintaining the present system, as we know from Committee, would be £50 million to £60 million over 10 years. Other hon. Members have suggested migrating the data to the Passport Service, but I have no idea what that alternative proposal would cost. Does the hon. Gentleman know what the cost of maintaining the system for 11,000 people would be?

[Steve McCabe]

Fortunately, I do not suffer from the voodoo economics of Conservative Members, so I do not have a clue where the hon. Gentleman gets the figure of £50 million or £60 million. We are saying that there should be a £30 discount when the person who currently holds a card next applies for a passport. Under whichever education system hon. Members operate, they should be able to work the figure out for themselves.

I like and respect the Minister and I trust what he says, but clause 3 states that the information on the national identity register will be destroyed. It is fair to say that when this was discussed in Committee his knowledge of the technical detail of the register was almost as good as mine, and neither of us is likely to get a job with Bill Gates any time soon. We know from the information that was presented to the Committee that there is some doubt in Government and in Government organisations about what is meant by the national identity register. We cannot pass legislation in good faith and then discover that it cannot be implemented because the Minister has been asked to do something that he is not technically capable of doing.

I make this point for two reasons. First, since the election, my colleagues and I have listened to the grandstanding from the Government Benches about their civil libertarian credentials. That will work in the early months of government, when it is easy to run around saying that they are against speed cameras or DNA testing, but it will not work when they face constituents who have suffered and want to know why the Government are not on their side—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire wants to come to the defence of his new-found friends again, I will give way.