Police Officer Safety

Victoria Borwick Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman’s point relates to something that may be considered by the Backbench Business Committee as part of the petitions process following the petition on Finn’s law. I am keen to meet the organiser of that for a conversation. Any kind of assault on police officers or on the animals and people who work with them is completely unacceptable. He mentioned spitting and there has been coverage recently of the view that the Mayor of London has taken on that. I think that any such behaviour is completely unacceptable.

I have talked quite a lot in recent speeches about the value we should place on policing as a profession. It should attract not just the bold and the brave but the brightest and the best. The new recruits taking their first steps in policing following the tremendous recent recruitment drive made possible by this Government are doing so at an exciting time.

I am afraid the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington got her figures a little confused in a few areas. I suggest that she look at the difference between recorded crime and actual crime, and crime and assaults against police officers rather than overall crime—and indeed the figures on police funding, which I will come to directly in a minute, where I am afraid her facts were a little off.

The crime survey of England and Wales shows that crime is down by more than a quarter. It is at its lowest level since that independent survey began some 35 years ago. But we recognise that crime is changing. Although this Government have always been clear that we do not seek to run policing, nor to decide from the centre how many officers are needed in Hackney or in Halifax, we want to make sure we are playing our part in helping the police to do their job. Where it is right for Government to act, we will, and have done so.

[Victoria Borwick (Kensington) (Con)]

I want to raise the increase in assaults on police officers at the Notting Hill carnival. What can the Minister do to make that event safe for our good thin line, which works so hard at it?

[Brandon Lewis]

Public events such as that one pose an extra challenge for our police forces. That is the exactly the kind of event I was seeing police officers, from a number of areas, training for last night. That training has been going on over the past few weeks, so if the people of Wiltshire have been seeing flashing blue lights recently they do not have to panic—they were for training exercises. It is important that we make sure the police have the support and funding they need to continue not just the recruitment drives to make sure their forces are at the right level—London is at the right level, as, in effect, the highest funded police force in the country—but that sort of training. The College of Policing has a hugely important part to play, which I will come to in a moment. Changes in crime bring with them a need for officers who can adapt—who have up-to-date skills and the energy and innovation to keep renewing them, who are committed to protecting the most vulnerable in our society, who can follow criminals online as well as they can on our streets and who put victims at the heart of what they do.

I do not underestimate the job of our police forces. They are widely and rightly acknowledged as the best in the world. Policing is a hugely challenging career. Police officers will see more than most people would ever wish to. It is clearly not a job for the fainthearted; it needs strength, resilience and a commitment to making our society a better and safer place. But that does not mean that getting assaulted in the workplace is part of the deal or that being abused or hurt while doing the job should be part of the cost of doing business as a police officer. It is not and must not be.

Only this morning, a police officer was seriously injured after an incident in Lancashire. My thoughts—and, I hope, those of the whole House—are with the officer involved and his family. Just yesterday, it was reported that officers were attacked with fireworks by a group of youths in north London. That incident is obviously now being investigated by the police.

Female Genital Mutilation

Victoria Borwick Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 General Committees

[Victoria Borwick (Kensington) (Con)]

I welcome all the comments that have been made and the positive way in which we are tackling this subject. Kensington has a high proportion of the Somali community and is one of the test areas in London where different trials are taking place on how to break down the barriers.

I welcome the Minister’s comments about looking at other ways of working together. Sadly, as those of us who have worked in this area know, if a mother has been cut it is quite likely that her children will be cut. We have the problem, as other Members have identified, that although FGM is picked up in the NHS, as a result of all the various regulations we have, quite rightly, on safeguarding people’s data, the information does not always reach the other agencies that can then follow through. When an older sister is cut and it comes to the attention of the school, there does not seem to be a system for getting the younger sister protected. Those are small initiatives.

The Committee’s aim is to eliminate FGM. Of course we should start getting prosecutions, but we also need to get underneath to the underlying communities. I welcome the comments from the hon. Member for Luton North about the cultural importance of getting men on side in the debate and changing the culture so that FGM is not an expectation. Whether we believe in God or not, we are born as we are born and it is not necessary to be cut of mutilated. That is the basis on which one should work with faith groups and community groups in order to get the message over.

I welcome the Minister’s approach in looking at a more collegiate way of working together across all the agencies and getting the NHS to feel confident about sharing data with schools and vice versa, rather than constantly being hung up about the Data Protection Act. If we can find a more positive way through the various things that stop us talking to each other, the sooner this terrible practice will be eliminated.