Police Reform

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for sight of her statement. Our long British tradition of policing by consent depends on our maintaining and ensuring the very highest standards of integrity and professionalism in British policing. The international reputation of our police is high. We know about the bravery and integrity of many officers across the country, but we also know that when policing goes wrong, it can cast a deep shadow over all that excellent work and undermine consent and confidence, too. That is why we have called for much stronger action on standards in policing. Lord Stevens is leading a major independent commission on the future of policing, which recommends radical reform. The reforms include: a new stronger police standards authority, replacing the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, with the power to launch investigations without referral and make sure that lessons are learned; chartered registration for every police officer; the ability to strike officers off the register; high professional and ethical standards against which officers must be measured throughout their career; public misconduct hearings; and a new Police First scheme to bring bright graduates, especially from technology backgrounds, into policing and many further reforms.

Today the Home Secretary has announced not strong reforms but a series of reviews—three reviews and one consultation. Many are welcome as far as they go. We welcome stronger action on whistleblowers, with greater protection for whistleblowers and transparency for the public. We welcome more support for police leadership, although she will be aware that when West Yorkshire tried her existing proposals on direct entry, none of the dozens of people who applied met the right standards. We agree that the complaints procedure and disciplinary system need to be reformed because they are not working, but these reviews just do not go far enough. Why not get on with it and introduce a proper register of chartered police officers? I am glad that she has agreed with our call for public disciplinary hearings, but, again, why not get on with disciplinary reform and hand it over to the College of Policing, giving it the power to hold public hearings and to strike people off? Why waste time on piecemeal reforms of the IPCC and the complaints procedure, when the truth is that they need to be replaced?

We have repeatedly called on the Home Secretary to replace the IPCC. The IPCC is supposed to be able to deal with things that go wrong in policing. It is better than the Police Complaints Authority that it replaced, but it has failed in its remit because it lacks the powers, capacity and credibility it needs. It failed on Ian Tomlinson. It failed on the Stephen Lawrence case and had to apologise to the family as a result. It failed to set out the clear lessons to be learned from a series of death in custody cases, including the Camm case in West Yorkshire. It has failed to deal with the problems from plebgate, and is still failing even to make a decision on whether to investigate what happened at Orgreave more than 12 months after a complaint was raised. How many reviews does she need to tell her that this system is not working? If she answers only one of my questions today, will she explain why she will not just admit that the IPCC is failing and needs to be replaced by a much stronger body?

The one thing that the Home Secretary is not reviewing that she should be is her flagship policing reform of police and crime commissioners. She spent £100 million—enough for several thousand constables—on elections in November, and only 15% of voters turned out. Now she is about to spend nearly £4 million of taxpayers’ money on a by-election in the middle of August. What will the turnout be then? How low will turnouts have to fall before she admits that she got those flagship police reforms wrong?

The Home Secretary also claimed that her other policing reforms were working, but the HMIC has today admitted that neighbourhood policing is now being eroded. Prosecutions and convictions are falling for violent crime, rape, domestic violence and child sex offences—even though all those offences are going up. There were 7,000 more violent crimes last year, but 7,000 fewer people were convicted of violent offences. She is failing to reform the police to deal with new and growing crimes. There has been too little action on online fraud, which is growing exponentially. On online child abuse, the National Crime Agency has details of more than 10,000 suspects, but it has no plans to investigate them all, to arrest them or to bar them from working with children because it admits that it does not have the capacity and systems in place to cope.

In the face of those challenges, what are the Home Secretary’s police reforms? The answer is lots more reviews. I am glad that she is moving in the direction that we called for and we are keen to work with her if she will agree now to go much further, but so far we have standards that are not high enough; enforcement that is not strong enough; police and crime commissioners no one wants to vote for; fewer police on the beat; fewer criminals being caught; and less justice for victims. The Home Secretary’s reviews are too little and too late. We will work with her if she goes further. We need not just reviews but reforms that work.

[Mrs May]

Yet again, the shadow Home Secretary has given us a completely confused response on Labour’s policy on a whole range of issues. Let me touch on some of the specifics that she mentioned. She asked why we do not have a register of police officers, but I have to say to her that the Labour party was in Government for 13 years, and if it thought that that was so important, why did it not do something about it? It did not even do anything about the police officers who were struck off and who, once they had departed one particular police force, were able to join another. We have introduced the register of struck-off police officers, so, unlike Labour, we are taking action.

The shadow Home Secretary talked about Labour’s proposal to merge the inspectorate of constabulary with the IPCC. I have to say that that would be a profound mistake. The inspectorate under this Government has become more independent of the police and of the Government. It has delivered hard-hitting reports on stop and search, the recording of crime statistics and domestic violence. Later this year, it will publish, for the first time, annual inspection reports of every constabulary in the country so the public can understand how their local police force is performing. Only today we have seen one of the most transparent and fair reports ever published by HMIC, so we should not be taking any risks in abolishing the inspectorate. Of course we do need to look at police complaints and the role of the IPCC, which is why I have just announced a consultation on changing the whole system of police complaints from end to end—from minor complaints to the most serious. It is a sensitive matter, which is why we will consult on it properly and get the policy right rather than jumping to some risky merger of HMIC and the IPCC, as Labour has proposed.

The right hon. Lady also mentioned the matter of the police and crime commissioners and the by-election for the PCC in the west midlands. Labour has been in Opposition for more than four years. There is less than a year to go before the general election, and she cannot even make up her mind about whether or not she supports the idea of police and crime commissioners. On the one hand, she tells us that Labour is happy to have police and crime commissioners, but on the other she says that they were not a very good idea. She really needs to make up her mind as to whether or not Labour supports police and crime commissioners. Somehow, among all this, she seems to be making the point that with the reviews and consultations that I have announced, there is not enough action on police reform. Again, I wish she would make up her mind. Does she or does she not want police reform? I remember the days when she called police cuts and police reform “the perfect storm”. If what she says amounts to a genuine conversion to the ranks of those who believe in police reform, I welcome her belated conversion.

The right hon. Lady also refers to the inspectorate of constabulary’s report. I do not know whether she has read today’s report, but the lesson is perfectly clear: police reform is working and crime is falling. The police are leading the way across the public sector by demonstrating, whatever the Labour party says, that it is possible to do more with less.

Let me quote what the inspector of constabulary says about police cuts:

“Police forces in England and Wales are to be congratulated. The vast majority have risen to and met the considerable challenge of austerity, with plans in place to save over £2.5 billion over the last four years—while protecting the front line as best they can and making sure that the public still receive an effective service.”

Yet again on that issue, as on so many such as police and crime commissioners and police reform, what we hear from the shadow Home Secretary is nothing more than confusion and chaos. She needs to get her story straight about whether she, like me, wants to build on the excellent police that we have in this country and to ensure that we give them the support that they need to carry on doing an effective job of cutting crime day in and day out.