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Police

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Home Office bunches crime and disorder reduction partnerships into crime families. I was giving the names of the crime family to which Slough belongs, and I think I got as far as Islington. The others are Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. The House will see that Slough’s fellow family members all have something in common—they are all in the area served by the Metropolitan police. In addition, they all have more police officers per resident than Slough, and their officers are better paid. I see that my hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has returned to his place. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) intervened on him earlier on this point, and the Minister was rather gracious in acknowledging that his constituents benefited from the Met’s poaching of officers from Thames Valley. When he responds to the debate, I hope that he will say that he will take action to bring that poaching to an end. Police officers in my area get a starting salary of £20,000. That compares with the £27,000 that Met officers get. After two years, those in my area get £24,000, which compares with £31,000 in the Met. A very vigorous campaign in Slough—run by me, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West and our local police officers—has led to the introduction of area allowances that reduce the gap, but other bribes are available. For example, Met officers enjoy free travel for a 72-mile radius around London, which of course includes the borough that I represent. The Metropolitan police force is undertaking a sustained and predatory attempt to recruit experienced officers from Slough. I engaged in correspondence on this matter with Sir Ian Blair, before he received his knighthood and became the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. In November 2002, when he was the deputy commissioner, he wrote to me saying that the Met"““had persistently argued, in the past, for the cessation of adverts designed to encourage officers to move forces””," but such advertisements are being used deliberately in my constituency. In addition, I was told that the Met wanted"““the introduction of a transfer fee for experienced officers to recoup the cost of training.””" However, neither idea was supported by other forces around the county. At present, the Metropolitan police force is recruiting in a predatory manner in the Thames Valley police area. It is offering bounties—I can think of no other word—of £200 or £250 to anyone who introduces an experienced officer into the Met. Next Monday, a coach load of 30 Thames Valley officers will go to a Met open day, and the substantial pay differentials mean that it is not unlikely that we will lose some of them. I recall what it was like in Slough in the days after the Tory dearth of police officers. The investment made by the Labour Government led to the recruitment of more police officers, but they were very inexperienced. That was evident in the quality of our policing. Now, we have reasonably experienced officers, but they are being taken away by the Met’s recruitment drive. My local police commander told me that between 25 and 30 cops had left the area since last autumn. In Slough, there are 12 cops out on patrol for each shift, but the commander told me that he had received two more resignation notes in the previous two days. That is the scale of the impact. As he said:"““We have the dilemma of balancing experience on the shifts or the specialist teams such as CID. The shifts are generally young in service and rely on the Sergeants for experience (but they are sometimes young themselves—in fairness, most of my Sergeants or Acting Sergeants are pretty experienced and are very good). The amount of serious crime in Slough necessitates having some experience on CID, but even then they are ‘fed’ from shift, so I can have some very young (service-wise) DCs, dealing with kidnaps, attempted murders, etc.””" The situation for policing in my town is being made worse by the predatory recruiting of the Metropolitan police. The Minister generously said that some local problems ought to be solved by broad discussion. He responded positively to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West who actively supports the campaign, so when he replies to the debate will he take on board proposals to deal with the waste of public money that occurs when one police force invests in stealing trained officers from another force? I am of course aware that some officers will for life reasons want to leave Slough and move to the Metropolitan area. That is fine, but I do not approve of bounties and targeted recruiting. Will the Minister consider stopping the Metropolitan police and other forces spending public money on bounties and on ringing and texting serving officers in other forces? Obviously, they should provide information about posts, but aggressive marketing and recruitment is inappropriate. Will my hon. Friend consider the imposition of a transfer fee if officers transfer to another force after training, whereby the receiving force would recompense the sending force for the cost of training the officer? Public money is used for that training, and transfer fees could make a huge difference. Perhaps future settlements could reflect the number of officers trained in a particular area but who transfer elsewhere. I take Sir Ian’s point that the Met has traditionally been an exporter of officers, so it might benefit from that proposal as much as areas such as mine. Finally, will my hon. Friend look at the cliff faces in police pay that still occur? I was grateful that the campaign that we ran after the 1997 election resulted in area allowances in places such as Slough, but there is still a substantial pay gap between Slough, which is similar to the Metropolitan police area, and the Met. The situation will be made substantially worse, because although terminal 5 will be policed by Metropolitan police officers it will be on the doorstep of my constituency. A number of officers will be attracted by the idea of completely indoor policing, as well as the extra money and firearms training that will accompany it. There are real challenges, which are not the result of Government policy but have arisen from the way that we deal with the boundaries of our localised police forces. The Mayor of London keeps asking me why Slough does not join London, and there are moments when I think that that would be the right thing to do. One such moment is when I look at the pay of our local police—another is when I look at our local transport services—but if the Minister could respond to proposals for transfer fees for our police, the option of joining London would look less attractive.