Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I feel the need not to let it rest there, Mr Speaker, but to respond to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) asked. I am sure that he will agree that what matters is accessibility to police. That is why one thing the Government are doing is reducing the amount of bureaucracy that the police have to deal with so that they can get out on the streets more. It is also why a number of forces up and down the country are considering accessibility in a different way, rather than simply having fixed police stations. I understand that Essex, for example, has seven mobile police stations that go to areas where people congregate, such as supermarket car parks, to increase accessibility to the police for members of the public.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

At the end of this month, the control orders legislation expires and the police and security services will have just six weeks’ transition to get the new weaker terrorism prevention and investigation measures and extra surveillance in place. The assistant commissioner of the Met, in a recent letter placed in the Library of the House, confirms the Met’s position last summer that

“it would take at least a year to recruit and train additional surveillance teams”.

She also says that

“not all the additional assets will be immediately in place”.

Why, then, is the Home Secretary so determined to push ahead with weaker counter-terror powers so quickly? Why does she not delay them and avoid piling extra pressure and risk on to the Met in the new year?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady knows full well that the Metropolitan Police Service and the Security Service will not have just six weeks to put transitional arrangements in place. They have been aware for some time that TPIMs would come in and extra funding would be available for extra surveillance. Subsequent to the letter sent by the assistant commissioner, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has written to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee to make it absolutely clear that effective transitional arrangements from control orders to TPIMs will be in place to ensure that we continue to do what we want to do and what everybody wants us to do: that is, maintain the security of people in this country.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Met has been put in a very difficult position. This is Olympic year and it will have considerable additional pressures from policing the games, from counter-terrorism and from an £80 million budget gap. There are no guarantees that it will not have to stump up for some of the riot compensation, too. The letter from the Met says that

“it is not possible to assess fully how the measures will work with the additional capability until both are fully in place and bedded in.”

The Home Secretary is forcing the police to conduct an experiment with security in Olympic year. The letter says:

“We will…seek to ensure that there is no substantial increase in overall risk to the UK.”

Why does this Home Secretary want to be personally responsible for any increase in the overall risk to the UK in Olympic year as a result of the timing of her legislation? Why does she not think again?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady knows that when we introduced TPIMs we were able to give assurances about the mitigation of risks in relation to TPIMs and their replacement of control orders. I ask her to reflect on why the coalition Government reviewed counter-terrorism legislation when we came to power. It was because of a concern about the impact of some of the legislation that her Government had introduced. It was a rebalancing of the necessary role of ensuring national security and maintaining civil liberties that led us to review that legislation. We have in place measures that I believe will enable us to provide the security that we need to provide. The package of measures includes TPIMs and extra money for surveillance for both the Security Service and the police, and I am confident that that package will give them the degree of cover they need to ensure that we maintain security.