Wendy Chamberlain
Main Page: Wendy Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat - North East Fife)(2 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Chris Noble: This is very close to home. We have a live operation in Staffordshire, which has been running now for some time, involving a number of protesters. It is incredibly complex, clearly. We have a limited idea of what is going on under the ground, in terms of what risks might be there. Are they near utilities? What risk could there be in terms of collapse of tunnels? It is clearly not a safe environment unless it is done by professional tunnellers. There is an inherent risk there, as well as the impact on the legitimate business going on in that area.
At this point—this probably goes to the core of one of the key issues that police are keen to discuss within the Committee—the vast majority of that work is done by the landowners and private companies that are skilled and experienced within this work. While I have some dedicated resources allocated to that at present, if that responsibility was to significantly shift to policing, it would cost me probably in the region of £80,000 a day to resource that. It would need significant officer resources, which clearly would need to come from elsewhere, so it is not only inherently dangerous; it is costing significant money and it is undoubtably impacting on the genuine, legitimate business interests of various companies.
The key, for me, is not so much even, necessarily, an offence around tunnelling, because we may well have powers that, broadly speaking, exist to deal with it—we are keen to develop that conversation. The challenge is in preventing it in the first place, and then in how we can work with industry and landowners on how we could potentially remove individuals more quickly. However, we are concerned that we have seen tunnelling come back on the radar again, and people will be held to account for what they do.
Q
Chris Noble: From a gold point of view, we probably have two or three officers who are trained or just about to do a credit, but we are also able to draw on neighbouring forces for that strategic support and command role, and top that up as necessary. Silver-wise, it is probably more in the region of maybe a dozen officers, again either accredited or being trained. For bronze, it is probably more in the region of a couple of dozen officers.
Now, this is not their day job. They do not wake up every morning and become a bronze commander and that is all they do—they are neighbourhood officers, they work in the criminal investigation department, they work in public protection teams—so while we have significant numbers of command officers, they are constantly being drawn for other matters. Whenever we have environmental protests or protests around High Speed 2 or other areas, there is a drain of that leadership role from elsewhere. We maintain hundreds of other officers within Staffordshire with a range of public order skills and capabilities but, again, none are completely dedicated to it. We would have about two dozen officers trained, as a minimum, in some other specialist skills as well. It is a significant commitment to maintain that training, but Staffordshire has definitely attracted some significant protest activity, so it is a necessary investment.
Q
Chris Noble: Training for the more specialist roles could be at least two or three weeks a year, in terms of the various skills that they need to maintain. For general public order trained officers, you are talking about two to three days per year to maintain that. From a command point of view, depending on refreshers, it could be a week a year. The bigger challenge is when they are deployed. If we take, for example, Just Stop Oil—we supported colleagues in a neighbouring force. Our protest removal team was essentially out of force for two weeks, consistently maintained within those deployments. There are abstractions around training, but we are finding because of the dynamics of the protest environment at the minute, either in force or supporting other parts of the country, those abstractions are increasing.
Q
Chris Noble: I see your line of questioning. I suppose we would be hopeful that by being able to intervene earlier, we could maybe limit the impact of protest. I think the proof of that will come out in terms of whatever moves from the Bill into formal legislation.
The biggest challenge that policing has at the minute—one we are keen to discuss as the Bill progresses—is any shift from public realm protest policing. If we moved more into a private space than currently, we would see that as potentially being incredibly significant for money and opportunity lost in terms of policing communities. Those abstractions would probably quite fundamentally change my local model of policing, in terms of being able to maintain that. That does not mean that we are any less committed to working with businesses and organisations to try to minimise the extreme disruption that can be caused to them on occasions.
Q
Chris Noble: Not within Staffordshire. That said, when you look at the challenge that is applied to policing of protest from those who protest, from those who are not happy with protest and those in the media looking on, I am not quite sure why some people would want to, but they do—they step up. They are excellent. They come back from training. They seek out the roles. They are open to feedback and learning and training. I have a huge amount of regard for them.
I have not found people being reticent to step up because, fundamentally, it is a core part of our democracy. Having local officers dealing with local protest, who are then policing those communities the next day, is incredibly important for me. I have not seen a reticence, but it is an incredibly challenging job. Very often, there is a perception that we do not get it right, when actually the inspection report was very clear that in the vast majority of occasions we did and a minor recalibration was required around the balance we needed to strike.
Q
Chris Noble: There is a rolling assessment with a part of policing called NPoCC, which is the police co-ordination body. As it becomes clearer what legislation will take place, those conversations will step up in terms of what it might mean for other jurisdictions, whether the legislation applies and whether the learning transfers across. We are constantly in contact with the devolved Administrations, and with European colleagues more widely, about legislation, tactics and police capability. Rest assured that those conversations will continue.
Andrew Bridgen and then Anne McLaughlin, but we will need quick questions and quick answers if everybody who wants to participate can get a chance.
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. The protestors state that in their social media posts and in the things they say directly to us when we are talking to them. They are intent on stopping the project. They want to stop the railway. They believe it is the wrong thing to do.
We have had to shift how we approach the removal operation by taking land earlier, to build in sufficient time for removal, so that it does not have a direct impact on the programme. We have learned as we have gone along and, as the protestor strategy has changed, our reaction to that has changed. Again, it is expensive work, having to have a High Court enforcement team, paramedics and mine rescue there 24/7, since 10 May, until they come out. Then we hand that over to the police and also probably the ambulance service.
Q
John Groves: I would expect that, if the legislation is enacted and the police pursue charges against individuals who are breaking these laws, it will have a direct effect. At the moment, when you compare the number of incidents we are seeing against the number of prosecutions and convictions, there is a disparity. I would hope this legislation would initially have a significant effect, and hopefully the deterrent effect will tail off after that and we would see a reduction in it. That is how I see it.
Nicola Bell: Similar to what I said earlier, for me it is about that repeat offence, where people keep going back out. That is one of the biggest impacts for us—what could be used under the serious disruption prevention order. I guess it is about them having more powers. All I can say is that, with the system as it is working at the moment, the police are telling us they do not have anything to deter and so they continue this repeated behaviour—hence why the injunctions were sought.
Q
John Groves: I do not know. In terms of the numbers of people we see protesting against HS2, we think there is roughly about 150 that are the core. Within that, there is a focused 20 people. It is not a big number, but we also see that they move between different causes and different protests. I suspect that we will see some of the people Nicola has been talking and vice versa. They will move. If there were a new Heathrow runway being built or a new nuclear build, they would probably move in those directions as well.
It is a relatively, I think, small community, albeit they draw in quite a large number every now and then. They will move on to other things, which is probably why the order would be helpful in that respect. At the moment, we are focused on HS2 actions in terms of our security and injunction work, but if the order has a broader effect across protester activity in general, that would be positive.
Q
John Groves: It is not just standard security for a site, which you would expect to see anywhere. The direct costs of protester activity to the taxpayer up to the end of March were £126 million. We estimate that by the end of next year, that could in a worst-case scenario reach £200 million.