Policing

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, whom I welcome to his new position, finished his speech by saying that Labour’s policies did not work in government. I remind him that we were the only Government in the modern era—going back to the first world war—who presided over a reduction in crime. That is to say that the amount of crime was less when we left office than when we assumed office. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was an excellent Policing Minister, understated the case. The Home Office statistics published in July 2010, from this Government, showed that overall crime fell by 50%, violent crime by 55% and domestic violence by 64%. The chances of being a victim of crime fell from a peak of 40% under the Tory Government to 21.5% under us. The murder rate in London was the lowest since I was wearing a tank-top and flares in the early 1970s.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week?

[Alan Johnson]

Indeed; It was a retro week.

We can now all celebrate that success. The Conservative party—I do not include the Liberal Democrats in this criticism—argued year after year that the statistics were wrong. I remember the Prime Minister standing at the Dispatch Box in opposition saying that crime was not falling but rising, and that when they came into power they would change how the statistics were correlated, but they have done absolutely nothing. They have changed the name of the British crime survey to the England and Wales crime survey, but the statistics are collected in exactly the same way.

That is why the Prime Minister was able to celebrate a 6% fall in crime this year in his tribute speech to that great woman, “Laura Norder”, on Monday. That figure was based on exactly the same formulation of statistics that he once criticised. We should recognise that the momentum of falling crime seems to have continued into this Government, whereas crime doubled under the previous Tory Government between 1979 and 1997, with violent crime increasing by 168% and burglary by 405%. The downward trend has been maintained. It is crucial that all our constituents understand why that has happened and how we can ensure that crime and disorder continue to fall.

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he held a meeting with civil servants in the Home Office. They told him that if the economy was successful, crime would increase, and that if the economy was unsuccessful, crime would increase. No matter which way the economy went, people believed that it would inevitably rise. That counsel of despair convinced successive Home Secretaries until Michael Howard’s appointment that rising crime was an inevitability. The economy is weak now but crime has continued to fall, just as it did in the 2008-09 recession when it went down by 9%. We can compare that with the recession in the ’90s, when it went up by 16%. There is no doubt that advances in technology have helped. Car thefts have reduced dramatically thanks to computerised security systems and CCTV has been an effective tool—it is of course not the whole answer—as has the DNA database.

Police reforms have made the biggest contribution to the dramatic reduction in crime. People trot out the tired old phrase, “The police are the last unreformed public service,” but anyone who has been a Member of this House over the past 20 years will have seen a huge change in policing. The principal change has been the move away from a reactive force, whose main preoccupation was to respond to crimes that had already been committed, to a force with a role more in keeping with Robert Peel’s original concept of a police force, whose primary objective was the prevention of crime and the maintenance of what he described as “public tranquillity”. It was the “Life on Mars” culture of the 1970s that took police away from communities and off the streets and challenged the Peel ethos, whereas the introduction of the dreadfully named crime and disorder reduction partnerships and neighbourhood policing—a huge change in how the police operated—did the most to restore it.

Over 15 years, we have moved from a police philosophy that stated that antisocial behaviour and low-level crime were nothing to do with them to a recognition that the police have an important role to play in working with other agencies to tackle such behaviour, which has a far greater impact on people’s perception of crime than some more high-profile offences. We have moved from an era in which domestic violence was considered to be nothing to do with the police and to be a matter for the adversaries to sort out to its being a major focus of attention for police forces across the country. Plenty of evidence suggests that that concentration on domestic violence has had a far wider impact on the reduction in other crimes.

In that context, I believe the Government have made a mistake in cutting the number of warranted officers. The work the police do on crime prevention in schools, in homes, as part of family intervention projects and in youth clubs and hostels will suffer as a result of those cuts and the partnerships that require the police to work together with local authorities, the NHS and the voluntary sector to tackle the underlying causes of crime will be placed in jeopardy. I predict that such cuts will eventually feed through to the crime statistics, to the detriment of our constituents across the country.

The Minister mentioned privatisation, and in the context of what is happening in Lincolnshire, the west midlands and Surrey I am bemused and amazed that the Home Office has not stated categorically that the tasks of patrolling our streets, the investigation of offences, and arrest—together with the use of firearms and the control of public disorder—must remain with police officers. Of course there can be co-operation with the private sector in other spheres, but that is what the police want to see and the reassurance has not been given.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) is here to man the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—perhaps he has drawn the short straw—but he and I are, to a certain extent, tourists in this debate as we both represent constituencies in Scotland. It is interesting to listen to people’s concerns about police reform in England and Wales. In Scotland, we are moving towards a single police force from the early part of next year. At the last Scottish Parliament elections, the hon. Gentleman’s party was against that and my party was in favour. It is often argued that the scale of the efficiencies that can be achieved will help to make it a sensible thing to do. However, I note that today the chief constable-designate of the new Scottish police force, the current chief constable of Strathclyde, highlighted the fact that there will be a £140 million gap in his budget over the next two years as a result of establishing the new Scottish police force.

I want to make three brief points. First, in the past few weeks I have spent some time in a couple of places in England—Manchester and Corby, for obvious reasons—and I have knocked on quite a few people’s doors and spoken to them about quite a lot of things. Other Members have spoken about people’s awareness of the PCC elections, and it struck me that there is in fact a stunning lack of awareness. I am very concerned—not from my own perspective and that of my constituency but on behalf of others in this House—that there will be a big problem in getting a decent turnout in the elections. The fact that very few people seem to have heard that they are happening underlines the serious problems that exist and what is likely to transpire.

Secondly, I am in the middle of taking the police service parliamentary scheme, which I am sure other hon. Members present have either taken or will wish to take in the future. I have found it a tremendously useful experience in understanding and appreciating the variety of things that rank and file police officers do and the circumstances they deal with. That has been valuable, because the things that we in this House and policy makers talk about and how they get translated into on-the-ground reality are not always one and the same.

As well as having the delightful experience of being in the centre of Glasgow on a Friday and Saturday night and seeing what the police have to deal with, it struck me that the morale of many of the police officers was quite low. Some of the issues under discussion may not be directly related to them—policing is a devolved matter in Scotland—but I was struck by their feelings on the wider issues of how they thought the Government feel about policing and on the Government’s attitude to the police. These people have been doing the job for a number of years and are very proud of what they do, but they sensed that the Government were not always batting in their favour.

The third issue that I want to address is not a devolved matter—police pensions and police pension commutation. The Minister of State might not be able to respond in detail—the issue probably comes under the brief of his colleague, the Policing Minister—but I would be grateful if he or his colleague responded to me in writing. One of my constituents paid into the police pension scheme for 30 years, but as the result of a misunderstanding by the Government Actuary’s Department he has lost out on thousands of pounds. I am sure that the Minister will be aware that, under the Police Pensions Regulations 1987, GAD had an implied duty to undertake reviews of the commutation factors used in the police pension scheme but, because of what the previous Policing Minister described in a written answer as a mistaken understanding of this duty between the early 1990s and late 2006, those reviews did not take place. As the mistaken understanding has been described as one of a historic nature, my constituent is not entitled to a pension under the re-evaluated commutation factors introduced in 2008. Understandably, he is aggrieved by that.

I appreciate that a number of cases have been raised with the pensions ombudsman and legal avenues, but I hope that the Minister will consider the issue again, because a number of people have been disadvantaged through no fault of their own. This is important to those former police officers. If the Government are behind policing and want to demonstrate that, they would send a powerful message by considering those important issues on behalf of former, as well as current, police officers.