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Police

I will, in all candour. We had hoped that the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers and Government consultation processes would all be aligned and would be completed by the end of the year, but that was not possible. ACPO is taking considerable time to reflect on these matters, which it is important to do, and will not be ready until April. The position of the APA is similar, though it may not need until April. To engender the debate, the Home Office will set out in February the broad vision and way forward in terms of the components of reform—broadly, what we need more of and what we need less of. Some of the issues that I have not touched on today but which are important were mentioned by Members—unfairly, in the case of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)—such as the function of the police framework assessment, the police standards unit and other units in the Home Office. I want to get to a stage whereby, on the back of good performance, the Government, while of course still measuring that performance, step back more and more in terms of inspection, bureaucracy and telling people what to do in a very prescriptive way and let local forces concentrate increasingly on that while we concentrate increasingly on output. The Home Office statement in February will engender a wider debate with colleagues in the APA and ACPO. In terms of reform and vision, I agree with much of the joint ACPO-APA document on sustainable policing; I could sign up to that tomorrow. I have some concerns about their comments on finance and resources, which I am happy to discuss with them, but I think that many would agree with the overall thrust of the document. I am grateful to many Members who talked about the huge improvements in policing that have taken place and made their comments in that context. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping), who is not with us at the moment, said that there have been huge improvements in Nottinghamshire although there is a long way to go. He echoed a point made by many other Members: whatever we do of substance in terms of reducing crime and getting more and more police officers on the front line, there is real difficulty in trying to shift the public perception of how safe or otherwise their areas are. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton rightly said that although, compared with many other areas, his area is safe—we may want to put that in inverted commas or contextualise it—that is a hard message to get across to many of his constituents, who still perceive it as relatively dangerous or crime-ridden. For the record, my borough of Harrow invariably stands at anything from 30th to 33rd in the crime rankings in London, including the City of London, yet it is still very hard to shift people’s perceptions—although things are changing with the introduction of the safer neighbourhood teams. That is not for political reasons, but simply because crime is such an important issue. Members are right to ascribe to the police the importance that they have in this debate, and I want to dwell on a few of the specific points that have been raised. With the greatest respect, I will not refer to the comments of the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter), not least because we heard them all last week in the Manchester debate. I took the opportunity to have a little comfort break at that point, because I knew that it was the only break that I was going to get. I apologise to him for my absence. I am sure that his speech was as excellent this week as it was last week. Several Members on both sides, including hon. Friends from the Thames Valley, Kent and Surrey, spoke about a situation that arises particularly in relation to the Met and its surrounding forces and to a lesser extent elsewhere. It is a fair point, but I do not have a piece of paper in my pocket to give an immediate response to it. I am not sure whether transfer payments are the answer. As Ian Blair has said, as much traffic goes the other way. I should think that the Met is, at worst, static in terms of imports and exports. Other Members mentioned Greater Manchester and its influence on Lancashire, Cheshire and other forces. However, the incentives offered by metropolitan forces outside London are not of the same nature as the Met can offer. It is worth exploring further the relationship between metropolitan forces with a larger resource base, relatively speaking, than the county forces surrounding them. I am sure that the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) will be more than happy for my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and the hon. Member for Banbury, to come one, come all for a chat about Thames Valley and its relationship with the Met as regards recruitment and a whole range of other issues. It is certainly a matter worth exploring. By the by, I add to the comments of all Thames Valley colleagues about the excellence of chief constable Sara Thornton and all that she is doing in the Thames Valley. I wish the authority well. I am not sure that I would go as far as to say—though I understand why people say it—that this is all about bribes and predatory behaviour and all those other elements. I understand why some of my hon. Friends talk in those terms. As a small aside—it is germane to the points raised by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton and another Member representing Sussex, though I cannot remember who—we are, in tandem with the Department for Transport and through the Boyce-Smith report, looking at the policing of airports and who should pay for it. That relates to some of the points made about terminal 5 at Gatwick and other issues that impact on Surrey as well as Sussex. We will report on that in due course. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton for the way in which he put his case. I have taken into account the point about the peculiarities— historic, geographic and otherwise—of some of the south-east forces, which requires further detailed consideration. I do not have all the figures to hand but when there have been specific international events at Sandown or elsewhere in Surrey, with unique policing dimensions, sooner or later—on balance and to be fair to the Home Office and Surrey—they have been dealt with. I do not think that the point about proximity to London in that regard means that it has been somehow ill served by the special grant regime. Again, some of the broader points about policing, crime markets and wider points that go beyond recruitment and the whole nexus of London and the surrounding counties, including Essex, were well made. I will try to think positively—I urge everyone to do the same—not just about Surrey’s predicament but about everybody’s position as we go forward into what will be, as I have said in all candour, three quite tight years. I would say to the hon. Member for Banbury and others who alluded to terrorism that the funding for counter-terrorism has increased fourfold since about 2002—to the best part of £0.5 billion. That is not part of the settlement and does not count as money going directly between forces and the centre. It is a grant put on top, so terrorism should be taken out of the equation. That does not mean that points raised about gaps in protective services at level 2—referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and others—do not exist, but they are starting to be addressed. Quite deliberately, counter-terrorism has been put to one side and needs to be dealt with in a regional, local and national configuration. That is being done. The hon. Member for Banbury and others raised another important point, which I tried to write down, about continuing demands being made of our police forces in ever-more sophisticated ways in an ever-changing world. That is absolutely the case. We are trying to address those points in an environment in which growth in resources has slowed down. That is the safest way of saying it, rather than the impression of ““cut, cut, cut”” that has been created by some hon. Members. There has been significant growth over eight or nine years. Yes, the rate is slowing and yes, it causes difficulties, but if all things remain the same and we go forward to the year after next, we should be able to address the issues collectively in all substance. It is not simply the point that 80 per cent. or more of funding is in people: if it is nothing more than 3 per cent., how can the inflation rate be described as very exorbitant? This issue is also about, to use the jargon, processes, business re-engineering and all the other elements. It about doing things smarter. It is about more and more civilianisation of custody suites, thus releasing police officers for the front line. It is about, however traduced, doing more on bureaucracy. It is about looking into the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and carrying out a full review of the Act, taking into account all the paperwork and paraphernalia surrounding the process of an arrest all the way through to dispatching people to the courts. That is about to commence. It is about the balance between summary justice, fixed penalty notices and who goes through the courts. That does not apply in a sharp, black-and-white, ““That’s a dreadful way to do it; do it this way”” manner, but in a serious fashion. It is about IT improvements such as the greater implementation of Airwave radios and live scan units for fingerprint images. Many exciting, challenging and sophisticated innovations and changes are happening in policing. I therefore believe that many of the efficiencies that we need to continue to secure from policing will come far more readily than would otherwise occur.