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Policing in London

I apologise to my hon. Friend; I am behind with my knowledge of constituency boundaries. The concerns relate to the many central targets that borough police commanders have to deal with. Far too much of my excellent borough police commander’s time is taken up with chasing those targets, and the targets that are set centrally and largely by the Home Office are frequently not the priorities that are most germane to people living in the London borough of Bromley. For example, we all agree about the key serious crimes—no one argues about that—but there is a centrally imposed target about the theft of bicycles. Any theft is important, but that is not a big issue for us. However, we can think of crimes that, in Bromley, we would put higher up the league. Greater flexibility for my borough commander, in consultation with the local strategic partnership, to set his own suite of targets for the problems in Bromley would be a real advantage for us. That is one point: greater flexibility to reflect the diversity of London would be valuable. Another point relates to the question of resourcing. Police officers are allocated to the borough command units—I do not include the response units and the other central units—on the basis of a resource allocation formula, which is worked out by the Metropolitan Police Authority by means of a system that, I think it is fair to say, is marginally more transparent that the Schleswig-Holstein question, although I suspect that there is not much in it. That formula has been reviewed periodically and there have been some changes, but it seems to me and, in particular, to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington, that there is a problem. Bromley is geographically the largest London borough. I am glad to say that it does not have one of the top levels of crime by any manner of means, and I would not pretend otherwise. Part of the formula reflects needs and demand, so that might mean that Bromley will get fewer police officers. But the formula does not adequately reflect the fact that a good half of the borough is green-belt land. In the southern part of the borough in particular, police officers—the safer neighbourhood teams and the response teams on the borough command unit—have a large amount of physical ground to cover. My hon. Friend made the point about its taking 20 minutes to get a response team from Bromley police station in the centre of Bromley down to Biggin Hill. Added to our limited total number of police officers, that means that, at times of stress, it is extremely difficult to cover the demand. On a Friday or Saturday night, the majority of police officers in Bromley will be engaged in dealing with what are largely public order issues in Bromley town centre. Those issues have been fuelled by the increase in the drinking culture, which—I am sorry to make a partisan point—recent legislation has not helped. The officers are under a lot of pressure and are doing their best—I am not knocking them—in difficult circumstances. However, that means that the more suburban and outlying parts of the borough are hard put to get a decent response. The resource allocation formula does not adequately reflect the needs of geographically large London boroughs. I would hope that something could be done to reflect those needs. The formula also does not adequately reflect the fact that Bromley—I suspect that it is not unique in this—in a net importer of crime. Something like 70 per cent. of the people arrested in the borough of Bromley do not reside there. That applies right across the range of crime. It applies to the professional burglar, who thinks that there might be quite good pickings, and, equally, to public order offences. Bromley town centre, in particular, and, to some degree, Beckenham attract people who travel in from further away in London. There is a night-time economy. Bromley is also a substantial commercial centre and there are shoplifting offences and other thefts associated with that. The current measures, which reflect Bromley’s normal resident population and its own internal deprivation, and other indices, do not capture the demand that Bromley’s police officers have to deal with. I hope that it would not be impossible for the formula to take those factors more accurately into account. I accept that there have been extra resources. All of us on this side of the House recognise that. As the leader of my party on the London assembly for most of the last seven years, I supported that. That is why I was glad to lay to rest the canard from the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter). We are happy to support extra resources for the police, but—this is not unreasonable and it is not being critical of the police—we want to ensure that we get the best possible value out of those resources. That is the key issue. People in Bromley probably contribute more in gross council tax than people in any other borough in London, but we have the lowest or second lowest ratio of police officers per head of population. I expect the ratio to be at the lower end, because it is not the busiest borough in crime terms, but the gap is marked. Many people, including those involved in crime and disorder reduction partnerships locally, believe that the difference in the levels of policing between ourselves and our neighbouring boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Croydon is one of the things that causes the displacement of crime into our borough. People in Bromley feel that they are not necessarily getting a fair deal. Another point related to making the best use of resources is the question of working practices, which my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) rightly referred to. When Sir Ian Blair was appointed Metropolitan Police Commissioner, he made a great deal of the importance of the service review. He was right to do so and I made it clear at the time that my friends in the assembly and I would support him if he went through with the review. I appreciate that other priorities have arisen, such as counter-terrorism measures, but it is important that we do not lose sight of the service review. North America is probably our best comparator, albeit not the only one. Many forces in north America get much more bang for the policing buck, which comes back to such issues as single manning and proximity policing. When I visited New York recently, I met members of the New York police department. Single manning is well established there, despite a culture in which there is probably a greater threat of violence to police officers on the streets than might be the case here. It has also been rolled out in Chicago and elsewhere. It is interesting that police officers there are encouraged to spend much less time in the precinct house. Such buildings are usually much smaller than those in this country and do not have such things as canteens. Officers are encouraged to take their breaks in the local deli—or the local café, as we would put it—so that they are seen out and about in the community to a greater extent. We should be prepared to consider such an approach, although that would require hard discussions with the Home Office, the Treasury, the Police Federation and representative bodies of the senior ranks. If the Met is to lead the way, as I hope it will, hon. Members on both sides of the House and people at all levels of governance in London will need to be prepared to give it political support. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the commissioner and any successor will have the support of the Government—I know that he will when we shortly come into government. I hope that the Mayor and others will also give such political back-up. I have pointed out some important large-scale issues. Bromley’s real concerns were addressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington, so I will not repeat them. However, I want to make two further short points. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford talked about the Blackwall tunnel. The tunnel affects my constituents. As far as the police are concerned, the risk is reputational, but if there is a question about safety, it should be debated. I am sure that the Minister will pass this on to the Minister with responsibility for London. We were concerned to discover recently that the likelihood of the closure of the Blackwall tunnel, apparently on police advice, was discussed with the London borough of Greenwich and the Highways Agency on 18 January, yet not a word was said to any of the other London boroughs, the London assembly or any other partners until about a fortnight ago, or less, when the contraflow was closed with less than a week’s notice. The lack of transparency is our real concern. If discussions were held on 18 January, it would have been mature if Transport for London had brought everyone into the loop and held an open discussion. Such an approach would have given the police’s case greater weight. South-east London does not have a tube system, so the overground is hugely important to us. I recognise the value of the work of the British Transport police and I recently had useful discussions with Ian Johnston, its chief constable. We face the problem that the transport police are extremely thinly stretched. The London south division of the BTP runs from the river down to Bournemouth. About 420 police officers cover the whole of the network, so there are really not enough to go around. If an incident is reported at a station in Bickley or Bromley, it is likely that BTP officers will have to go by train from Victoria or Lewisham, which makes the response time virtually impossible. If BTP officers cannot respond, they have to try to farm out the call to the local Met police, who might be tied up anyway. There are thus real problems with passengers’ feeling of security on the overground network. I am not one of those people who think that the issue would be solved by integrating the British Transport police and the Met—I am not that interested in structural change—but we should consider much closer operational integration; a lot of good work has been done that way. It ought to be possible to make it much easier for Metropolitan police officers to get on to British transport property to pursue those who are breaking the law, subject only to safety issues, such as rail currents. I hope that there can be more good will and flexibility between the forces, so that we can resolve any boundary issues. Another concern that we have about security on the railway network involves closed circuit television. The position in relation to CCTV on our overground trains varies significantly. Some of the London commuter networks have 100 per cent. CCTV coverage of their rolling stock, and that is obviously desirable. The train operators One, c2c, Central Trains and Chiltern Railways are all virtually at the 100 per cent. mark. I am troubled to find that South Eastern Trains, which covers my part of the world, has less than 50 per cent. of its carriages covered, and that is the lowest of the lot. That really is unacceptable. If we want to encourage people to use public transport, they have to feel safe and secure doing so. Southern Railway next door manages 100 per cent. coverage on its commuter units. There can be no justification for that massive discrepancy between broadly similar networks. Although there is CCTV on virtually all our railway stations, I discovered that it is not necessarily always monitored, and monitoring is the key thing that gives people a sense of security. We know from underground networks elsewhere that it is possible, if there is proper monitoring, to send out voice messages in the station. I have heard the message, ““Stop smoking on the station.”” There should be a bit of investment in providing that kind of service from a central control room. Letting people in railway stations know that they were being watched would be a real reassurance, is not expensive and is technically feasible. That is a simple, practical suggestion. I know that it troubles the BTP that it does not have adequate input into the way in which franchise documents for rail companies are drawn up, and in ensuring that security issues are given adequate attention. It is important that when a company bids for a rail franchise, making sure that the system is safe, secure and will reassure people is top of the list. It is not too difficult to write that into the documents. It would be helpful—perhaps the Minister can take this back to his colleagues—if we acted on BTP’s suggestion that one of its senior officers be seconded to the Department for Transport to work with the officials responsible for drawing up the rail franchises. That would help us to ensure the more holistic approach to which I referred; again, that is hardly costly, and it would be a bit of joined-up government. I have touched on just a few of the issues to do with policing in London; it is a huge topic and we could go on for a long time. I hope that I have demonstrated that a great deal of good work is done, but the last thing that anyone, regardless of their party, wishes us to do is rest on our laurels. I think that it is 72 per cent. of the Mayor’s precept that is taken up by the Metropolitan police; I undersold the amount earlier. Of course, part of the costs of policing transport services is added on to the fares paid by my constituents. All that we want is to make sure that the most rigorous attention is paid to getting the best value for money out of that valuable public investment, and to make sure that the police are freed up from the need to deal with centrally imposed targets, so that they can produce something far more closely tailored to the needs of their communities. That, ultimately, is the point. We all accept that if policing is to work, it has to be done with the consent and agreement of the local communities. Communities can work closely in partnership with their police officers, and there are good examples of that among the safer neighbourhoods teams, but we should go further. I hope that the Home Office will consider taking on board the Commission on London Governance’s recommendation that there be a statutory right for local councillors to be consulted about policing priorities in their area. They should be consulted in their ward, as opposed to simply through the scrutiny panel process. I do not think that that is unreasonable, and I am saddened that the Minister should shake his head. Labour members of the Commission on London Governance did not have any trouble with it.