Post Office and Horizon Software

Debate between Steve McCabe and Ian Paisley

Thursday 5th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Member and I are on the same page. This has got to be sorted out and a payment has got to be made. Ultimately, the right person and the right corporation have to be held responsible and accountable for their actions. If individuals have done even some of the things that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire recounted to the House on behalf of his constituent—my goodness! Four or five people in the basement of that room should be taken to court and held accountable for their actions. We need to face this issue honestly and openly.

I call on the Government to have some transparency. Let the public be the judge and jury. Let us set out with transparency the amount of money that was supposed to be paid, and who is getting what of that money. If it means shaming certain people for walking away with their pockets stuffed full because they represented a case—they are entitled to their payments, but postmasters get absolutely zilch in some circumstances—that should be exposed. I hope it is exposed. I call on the Minister to ensure that we have that transparency, because of what has now happened.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

I call Duncan Baker. Mr Baker, thank you for notifying me of your interests. Will you repeat the information for the record?

Police Grant Report

Debate between Steve McCabe and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

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

[Steve McCabe]

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

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

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