The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As hon. Members of this House are aware, since 2010 the Government have implemented the most radical programme of police reform in decades. That programme is bringing about real and substantial change, and has made policing more accountable, more efficient and more effective. At the same time, we have ensured that policing plays its part in helping to get this country’s finances back on track. We reduced police budgets, saving £1.5 billion in cash terms from 2010-11 to 2015-16, and crime has fallen. Today, crime is down by more than a quarter since 2010, according to the independent crime survey for England and Wales.
However, the task of police reform is not yet finished. Last autumn, through the spending review, we protected police spending in real terms over the course of this Parliament, once the local precept is taken into account. But no one should be under the illusion that this settlement allows police forces to ease off on the throttle of reform. Over the course of this Parliament we must continue to apply the lessons of the past five and a half years and ensure that policing can respond not just to the challenges of today, but to the challenges of tomorrow, too.
Crime has fallen, but it is still too high. The public rightly expect the highest standards of integrity and professionalism from the police. The challenges ahead are complex and difficult: the growing threat from terrorism; the changing menace of serious and organised crime, fraud and cybercrime; and the increasing role technology plays in crime. We are also seeing increasing numbers of people having the confidence to come forward to report child sexual abuse and other crimes such as domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Home Secretary was talking a moment ago about cybercrime and the changing nature of crime. She makes claims about crime numbers falling, but does she not accept that in fact crime is changing? I have here answers from the Home Office stating that it is dealing with 1,000 cases a week of terrorism-related material, 70% of which is from Daesh. There are huge changes in the types of extremist activities online. Does she accept that crime is changing and might not be falling?
Mrs May
I say to the hon. Gentleman that the figures from the independent crime survey show that crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010. Crime is indeed changing. That is precisely why we have set up the National Cyber Crime Unit inside the new National Crime Agency, which was formed over the past five and a half years. He cites a figure of 1,000 pieces of internet material, but that is a slightly different issue; it refers to the number of pieces of material on the internet that are now being taken down on average every week by the counter-terrorism internet referral unit. Members of the public and others are able to refer pieces of material to the police, and we have a very good relationship there, with the police working with the companies to take that material down. He rightly says that the quantity of the material that is being taken down, a lot of which will relate to Daesh, is significant. That is one of the reasons why we have not only worked to have the CTIRU here in the UK, but have worked with our European partners to ensure that at Europol a comparable European body has been set up, and it is also working to take down terrorist and extremist material from the internet.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Secretary of State mentioned the exploitation of teenagers, and I am sure she is aware of the Children’s Society’s “Seriously Awkward” campaign. Several constituents have written to me about this asking whether I could raise the issue of whether there is scope within this Bill to address teenage sexual exploitation, particularly that of 16 and 17-year-olds, and the use of drugs and alcohol. They specifically ask for more powers for the police to intervene to stop the sexual exploitation of vulnerable 16 and 17-year-olds through drugs, through drink, and through coercion and grooming, and for a new offence to be brought forward to deal with those who use drugs and alcohol. Does she think that is a possibility?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman mentions the serious matter of the exploitation of those who are perhaps above the age of consent, which therefore raises different issues for the police and for the policing of those crimes. However, the police do have the powers to deal with that today, but I am sure that the issue will be raised during the course of debate on this Bill. It is right to point out that, when we talk about sexual exploitation, it is not just younger children who are potentially subject to it, but teenagers of the age to which he refers.
If policing is successfully to meet the challenges that it faces over the next five years, we must continue to reform it to drive efficiency, new capability, and higher levels of professionalism and integrity. This Bill is directed towards those ends.
Let me turn now to the provisions in the Bill. Many in this House will know of excellent examples of collaboration between the emergency services in different parts of the country. Although each of the emergency services has its own primary set of responsibilities, there is clearly scope to unlock the benefits that can be derived from closer working, including reducing costs. For example, in Cheshire, the police and the fire and rescue service are integrating most of their back-office functions and establishing a single, shared headquarters by April 2018, delivering estimated savings of nearly £1.5 million a year and improving the quality of service to the public.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary also urge some joined-up thinking on her ministerial colleagues, because there are some huge opportunities as a result of the devolution agenda? In places such as Greater Manchester, for example, where the boundaries of the police and crime commissioner, the mayor and the fire authority are coterminous, there is an opportunity to join up the services as a single unit. In other devolved areas, there is not that coterminosity, which then deprives them of the same type of shared services.
Mrs May
First, the hon. Gentleman is right about Greater Manchester. Obviously, it has taken a number of steps in that direction. The fire and rescue service has signed an agreement to work with North West Ambulance Service so that it can respond to cardiac arrest cases in the region. The critical risk intervention team in Greater Manchester brings police, fire and rescue and ambulance services together, showing in a very real sense how, on the ground, this collaboration can be very effective and bring a better service for people.
The hon. Gentleman is right that the coterminosity issue is a factor in some of these devolution deals. I am very clear that police and crime commissioners should be involved in discussions about devolution deals as they go ahead, but what we are doing in the Bill is enabling police and crime commissioners to have that collaboration with fire and rescue services—but bottom up, so that local areas will determine what suits them in their local area. The benefits that we have seen in areas such as Great Manchester can be brought to other parts of the country. There are other examples. Hampshire, Northamptonshire and many other places are also looking to put that collaboration into practice under the leadership of police and crime commissioners.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for mentioning Hampshire before I did. I know that she is looking for reform to continue and for collaboration between the emergency services. I am sure that she is aware of the H3 project in Hampshire between the county council, the constabulary and the fire and rescue service, which is a genuine trailblazer in this area. The partners in that collaboration are already delivering savings of 20%, so is Hampshire not the apple of her eye as she embarks on this Bill?
Mrs May
I am tempted to do that. I should perhaps respond that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is the apple of my eye when he stands up and makes such a point about Hampshire. [Interruption.] Well, I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) that he has not yet put into practice what he said he wished to do.
Hampshire is a very good example of the collaboration that can work. The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice has visited Hampshire. He has seen Winchester fire and rescue service and the police station. These are all innovative ideas that provide a better service to people. I commend Hampshire and other parts of the country where they are putting this collaboration into practice.
David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that collaboration and co-operation are very important when an incident occurs? During and after the Somerset floods, many of my constituents wrote to me and spoke to me about the importance of the emergency services working in tandem. That is the best way to ensure that the most vulnerable in each community get the help they need.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. When an incident takes place, the three emergency services will often be called and will have to work together. That is why the Government did a great deal of work under JESIP, the joint emergency services interoperability programme, to look at improving how the three services work together—the protocols, the language that is used and the command structures that can be put in place—so that, as my hon. Friend says, they also work together on their emergency response.
The national picture remains patchy. Collaboration should be the rule, not the exception. That is why, as I have said, part 1 of the Bill places an overarching duty on the three emergency services to collaborate. It will help to drive close working across the country when that would improve efficiency or effectiveness. In the case of police forces and fire and rescue services in particular, I believe that there is a compelling case for taking such collaboration agreements a step further. To facilitate enhanced collaboration and strengthen democratic oversight, part 1 provides a framework for police and crime commissioners to take responsibility for delivering foreign rescue services by local agreement.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I am sure that my right hon. Friend would accept that one of the most challenging parts of our country in which to deliver police services is, of course, Northern Ireland. I am sure that she is aware of the fantastic steps that have been taken in Northern Ireland to share training for the police and the fire authority and the huge savings that that has delivered. Could we not learn something in this House from Northern Ireland’s contribution to training?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, we must recognise that there are particular policing challenges for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, but it is right that the police and the fire and rescue service train together there, and that is a very good example.
To return to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) about the emergency services coming together to deal with the flooding in Somerset, training together can help that emergency collaboration when an incident takes place. Over the past three and a half years PCCs have proved the value of having a single democratically elected figure by providing visible leadership, proper local accountability and real local scrutiny of how chief constables and their forces perform while driving reform and innovation and finding efficiencies to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. In nine weeks’ time, voters up and down the country will be able to hold PCCs to account for their performance and judge new candidates on their proposals in the most powerful way possible, through the ballot box. I believe that it is now time to extend the benefits of the PCC model of governance to the fire service when it would be in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, or public safety to do so.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
There is no doubt that as Home Secretary, the right hon. Lady has altered for ever the landscape of policing in our country. PCCs are an example of that. Does she share my concern about the number of candidates applying for jobs as chief constables? In the case of half of the chief constable posts advertised in the country in the past couple of years, only one candidate has come forward for each job. In the West Midlands, Cambridgeshire and the Home Secretary’s own area of Thames Valley, the deputy has got the top job. They are all excellent candidates, but is it not a worry that so few people are applying at that very high level?
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue. It is a matter that I have discussed with the College of Policing in the context of its leadership work and with Sara Thornton of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It is not new to have a small number of people applying for chief constable posts. That is one of the things that happens in policing; people tend to work out who they think will get a job and often do not apply if they think that somebody else will almost certainly get it. That has been the practice over the years, but we have seen a number of cases in which there have been single applicants, which is a cause for concern. That is why I have been discussing the matter with bodies responsible for considering leadership in policing to see whether steps can be taken to change that.
Ian Austin
We in the West Midlands are delighted with the appointment of our new chief constable, Dave Thompson, who we think will do a remarkable job, but can the Home Secretary explain to me why he and his colleagues have had to deal with that police force losing 25% of its budget, compared to Surrey, which has lost just 10% or 12%?
Mrs May
May I, too, commend Chief Constable Dave Thompson in the West Midlands? I and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), were aware of the work that he did in relation to gangs, which he was doing with the Home Office for a number of years. Once again, the Labour party seems incapable of recognising the settlement that has been given for policing over the next four years, and the fact that we have given that stability to police financing over the next few years.
I return to the topic of collaboration between the emergency services. Where a local case is made, the Bill will enable a PCC to take this one step further by integrating the senior management teams of the police force and the fire and rescue service under a single chief officer. This single employer model will allow the rapid consolidation of back-office functions without the complexities of negotiating collaboration agreements between the PCC, the chief constable and one or more fire and rescue authorities. I should stress that under these reforms police officers and firefighters will remain distinct and separate, as set out in law, albeit supported by increasingly integrated HR, ICT, finance, procurement, fleet management and other support services.
In London, we intend to strengthen democratic accountability by abolishing the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and bringing the London fire brigade, managed by the London fire commissioner, under the direct responsibility of the Mayor.
Mrs May
These reforms to the arrangements in London are supported by all the key bodies, including the authority itself.
The vast majority of police officers and police staff discharge their duties with integrity and professionalism, upholding the best traditions of policing in this country. But where the actions of a minority fall short of the high standards that the public are entitled to expect, there need to be arrangements in place so that the conduct in question can be properly looked into and the matter resolved in a timely and proportionate manner.
In the previous Parliament we took steps to improve standards of police integrity and to strengthen the police disciplinary system. Disciplinary hearings are now held in public and overseen by an independent legally qualified chair. Police officers who are dismissed now have their name held on a “struck off” register so that they cannot join another force. Where corruption is involved, officers can for the first time be prosecuted for a specific offence of police corruption, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is being beefed up to take on all serious and sensitive cases.
However, there are still significant shortcomings in the current system: indeed, almost three quarters of people complaining to the police are not satisfied with how their complaint is handled. The current arrangements are seen by the police and the public alike as being too complex, too adversarial, too drawn out and lacking sufficient independence from the police. So the provisions in part 2 will build on the reforms that we have already introduced and make the police complaints and discipline systems simpler, more transparent and more robust.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate the Home Secretary giving way. Is she as concerned as I am about the length of delay in the disciplinary process and transparency about the failings in relation to Poppi Worthington’s death in Cumbria? What will the Bill do to speed up the process and increase transparency in such circumstances?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise a case about which many people were deeply concerned to see what had happened and how it was handled. I understand that there is an issue for the IPCC in relation to a possible inquest, and the interaction between the IPCC and the inquest. These are challenges that we need to consider very carefully to ensure that the proper process can take place in a timely fashion, and that people do not find that these processes appear to be dragged out for a significant time. There are genuine issues sometimes in relation to inquests and IPCC investigations that have to be properly dealt with and addressed, but I know that everybody was concerned about the appalling case that the hon. Gentleman referred to, and he is right to raise it, as I know he has done previously in this House.
Part 2 builds on the reforms in relation to police complaints and disciplinary systems, and the changes will ensure we can strip away much of the system’s restrictive bureaucracy, remove the opaque categorisation for handling complaints and streamline the complex appeals process by replacing the existing five avenues of appeal with a single review of the outcome of the complaint.
The police will be given a new duty to resolve complaints in a reasonable and proportionate manner, while also having greater flexibility in how they meet that duty. We are also injecting greater independence into the system by strengthening PCCs’ oversight role and making them the appellate body for those appeals currently heard by chief constables. It will also be open to PCCs to take on responsibility for other aspects of the complaints-handling process, including the recording of complaints and keeping complainants informed of progress.
The Bill will create a system of “super-complaints”. These are complaints that can be brought by a designated organisation, such as a charity or advocacy body, on a particular issue, which might relate, for example, to a pattern of policing that could undermine legitimacy. This will enable national or cross-force issues to be examined by the inspectorate, the IPCC or the College of Policing, as appropriate.
Part 2 strengthens the protections for police whistle- blowers by enabling their concerns to be investigated by the IPCC, while protecting their identity so that they have the confidence to come forward without fear of jeopardising their own careers. It also enhances public confidence in the police disciplinary system, including by ensuring that disciplinary action can continue against officers after they have resigned or retired, and by placing the police “struck off” list on a statutory footing to ensure that no one dismissed from one police force can be re-employed by another. Taken together, these reforms represent a fundamental overhaul of the police complaints and disciplinary systems.
In addition, part 2 includes provisions to increase the powers and independence of the IPCC. However, we also need to ensure that the body charged with overseeing the system as a whole is itself organised in such a way as to best equip it to efficiently and effectively discharge its enhanced role.
Following an independent review by Sheila Drew Smith and our recent consultation on changes to the governance of the IPCC, I have concluded that the existing commission model, with commissioners having operational responsibilities, is no longer suitable to oversee the expanding organisation in the new system. At a time when the IPCC is growing as an organisation to take on all serious and sensitive cases, it needs to be more streamlined, more responsive to the public and better able to cope with the cases it is taking on. I therefore intend to bring forward amendments to the Bill to provide for a new governance model.
The reformed organisation will be headed by a director general, appointed by Her Majesty the Queen. The director general will have ultimate responsibility for individual case working decisions, including in respect of the investigation of the most serious and sensitive allegations involving the police. Corporate governance will be provided by a board comprising a majority of non-executive directors, appointed by the Home Secretary, which will have oversight of the overall running of the organisation. It follows that as, under the new governance model, there will be no commissioners, we cannot continue with the name “Independent Police Complaints Commission”. The reformed organisation will instead be known as the Office for Police Conduct.
I should add that the IPCC is supportive of the need for reform, and I am grateful for the input and co-operation of the current chair and chief executive during the development of these proposals.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I broadly welcome what the Home Secretary is outlining in terms of the IPCC, but one complaint I have from constituents is about the time the IPCC takes to deal with some very simple cases. Constituents would rather know that there was no case to answer than see things being dragged out. Are there any proposals to have different tracks for more complex cases and simple cases?
Mrs May
Yes. It is important that all cases are dealt with in as timely a fashion as possible. Beefing up the ability of local complaints procedures to deal with what we might see as simpler local complaints may very well enable people to get a better response from that local complaints process, rather than feeling that things then have to be put through to the IPCC, which will have a focus on serious and sensitive cases. Also, the restructuring will help to smooth the process by which cases are looked at by what will be the OPC.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
This Second Reading debate is not the time to go into the details of the case of former sergeant Gurpal Virdi, but will the Home Secretary ask her advisers to talk to the IPCC about why it is saying that his complaint should be referred back to the Met’s department of professional standards, given that the complaint was about its behaviour in the first place, in the incomprehensible prosecution that he had to endure last year?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises a case that, as I know from our discussions and correspondence, he has taken very seriously and acted on for some time now. I recognise the issue that he has raised. There are questions around this case that relate not just to the IPCC and the police but to the Crown Prosecution Service, and I know that he has taken those up. I will reflect on the point that he made.
In part 3, for the first time, we will create a list of core police powers that may be exercised only by warranted officers, such as powers of arrest and stop and search. Police powers that do not form part of this reserved list can be conferred by a chief officer on a member of police staff or a volunteer, provided that they are suitable and capable of carrying out the relevant role and have received the appropriate training. This will ensure that chief officers have the flexibility and freedoms to make best use of the skills, experience and training of their workforce, whether they are warranted officers, police staff or volunteers.
As Members of this House are aware, volunteers have much to offer policing. Over 16,000 special constables regularly give up their time to help keep our communities safe. However, forces are missing out on opportunities to use those with specialist skills, for example in IT or forensic accountancy, who would be prepared to volunteer their time but do not want to become a special constable. It makes no sense that a chief officer can vest all the powers of a constable in a volunteer, but lacks the ability to confer on a volunteer a narrower set of powers relevant to a particular role. The existing law also puts unnecessary constraints on a chief officer who wishes to maximise the operational effectiveness of police staff. The Bill removes these barriers while strengthening the role of warranted officers. It confers on chief officers the ability to designate police staff and volunteers with those policing powers appropriate to their role.
I am committed to ensuring that the police have the powers they need to protect the public and to prevent, detect and investigate criminal offences, but we should continue to keep the coercive powers of the state under regular review to ensure that the rights of the individual are properly balanced against the need to keep our communities safe.
Mrs May
If I may, I will make a little more progress on this issue. In two instances—pre-charge bail and detention under the Mental Health Act 1983—we need to take action to ensure we get the balance right. Part 4 therefore contains a number of important reforms to police powers. In the case of pre-charge bail, it is apparent that a significant number of individuals have spent an inordinate amount of time on bail only to end up not being charged or, if charged, found not guilty. Of course, the police and prosecution need time to assemble and test the evidence, particularly in complex cases, before coming to a charging decision, but we need to recognise the stress caused when people are under investigation for prolonged periods, and the disruption to their lives where they are subject to onerous bail conditions.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
I welcome the provision in clause 53 to increase safeguards for 17-year-olds, in recognition of the fact that they need to be treated as children when in police detention. However, there is also a strong argument for heavier sentences for adults who have been convicted of sexual assaults against 16 and 17-year-olds who, although over the age of consent, are still children in law. Will the Home Secretary consider that proposal?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady raises an interesting point. However, it is possible that the age of the individual can be used as an aggravating factor in relation to dealing with the offence, so it can be taken into account in the case of somebody who is 16 or 17.
Before coming specifically to the issue of mental health, I will deal with the bail proposals. To address the legitimate concerns that have been raised about the current arrangements, the Bill introduces a number of safeguards. First, it creates a presumption that a suspect will be released without bail conditions attached. Secondly, where it is necessary and proportionate to release on bail, this would normally last no longer than 28 days. Thirdly, if this initial period needs to be extended, it can be extended only up to three months on the authority of a superintendent, and any subsequent extension, for a maximum of three months at a time, must be authorised by a magistrates court. The Bill provides for a special procedure in complex cases, such as those investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, but the requirement that prolonged periods of pre-charge bail, and any conditions attached to that bail, are subject to judicial approval is clearly established in primary legislation.
The Government are committed to ensuring better outcomes for people with mental health problems. Those experiencing a mental health crisis and who present a danger to themselves or to others need rapid support and care from mental health professionals. They do not need locking up in a police cell for up to 72 hours.
Over the past couple of years, significant strides have been made in reducing the instances where police cells are used as places of safety, but we must do more. The amendments to the Mental Health Act 1983 will ensure that police cells can never be used as a place of safety for children and young people under 18, and that they are used only in genuinely exceptional circumstances in the case of adults.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for all the work she has done with Black Mental Health UK in previous years. Will she meet Black Mental Health UK, Rethink Mental Illness, Mind and other interested parties to discuss their continuing concerns about sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act? They all accept that the Home Secretary has made some fantastic strides in the Bill.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend, who has a fine record of campaigning on these issues, is right to raise that point. The organisations he mentions meet Ministers regularly through the crisis care concordat, but I am happy to look at their concerns. I hope that the Bill will go some way to dealing with some of the continuing concerns, notwithstanding the work we have done over the past few years in improving the police response to people who are at a point of mental health crisis.
Mr Kevan Jones
I welcome some of the mental health changes being outlined by the Home Secretary, but there is an omission in relation to advocacy. Those individuals detained under sections 135 and 136 are not automatically allowed to have advocates. Will she look at that, because I think it would certainly strengthen some of the Bill’s reforms?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Obviously, what we are trying to do through the Bill, the street triage pilots and the extra mental health provision in various parts of the country is to reduce the need for advocacy by reducing the amount of time people can spend in a police cell. Indeed, the Bill also reduces the maximum period of detention for the purposes of mental health assessment under sections 135 or 136 from 72 hours to 24 hours, with the possibility of an extension to 36 hours if a medical practitioner decides that it is clinically necessary. In parallel with those legislative changes, the Department of Health is making up to £15 million available in the coming year to improve the provision of health-based places of safety.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Will the Home Secretary join me in commending Devon and Cornwall police, who, through careful joint working, have made great strides in reducing the use of cells under section 136 over the past year? Does she agree that police forces also need to collect data on how long people are being detained in police vans? We do not want police cells to be substituted by police vans.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises an important point. Whenever we legislate, we have to consider the possible unintended consequences. Of course, the whole point of the street triage pilots and the availability of advice from mental healthcare professionals to the police is to ensure that somebody can be taken to a place of safety, not a police cell. A van is not an appropriate place to hold people, either. My hon. Friend is certainly right that we should look at the issues to make sure that we are not inadvertently creating another problem.
Mrs May
Despite what I said earlier, I apologise to my hon. Friend, but I need to make some progress. [Interruption.] The fickleness of woman!
Let me turn to the question of firearms. This coming Sunday will mark 20 years since the appalling murder of 16 children and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School. I am sure the whole House will want to join me in sending our deepest sympathies to those who lost loved ones and to the survivors of that terrible day. We are also reminded of the importance of firearms legislation in helping to prevent such events from happening again.
In this country, we have some of the toughest firearms controls in the world. It is no coincidence that the number of homicides and other crimes involving firearms is relatively low, but we must remain vigilant. Where there is clear evidence of loopholes in the law that can be exploited by terrorists and criminals, we must act to plug the gaps. The provisions in part 6 are directed towards that end.
After extensive consultation, the Law Commission has made a number of carefully considered recommendations for tightening up the firearms Acts. It is simply no longer sustainable, for example, to have uncertainty around what constitutes an antique firearm. The Bill therefore defines that and other terms so that it is clear when firearms, and their component parts, are subject to the controls under the firearms Acts. We are also introducing statutory guidance for police forces on the exercise of their licensing functions under the firearms Acts. That will ensure that the law is consistently applied and all appropriate checks are undertaken when considering someone’s suitability to hold a firearm or shotgun certificate.
Finally, part 8 strengthens the enforcement of financial sanctions, which are important foreign policy and national security tools. The effective implementation and enforcement of financial sanctions are vital to their success. To this end, the Bill increases from two to seven years’ imprisonment the maximum sentence that can be imposed following a criminal conviction for a breach offence, introduces new civil monetary penalties and extends the availability of deferred prosecution agreements and serious crime prevention orders.
Mrs May
If the hon. Lady will excuse me, I am virtually at the end of my speech, and I wish to finish.
Part 8 also introduces a mechanism to ensure that UN-mandated sanctions can be implemented without delay to minimise the opportunities for the dissipation of assets before new sanctions regimes come into force, and to help the UK comply with its international obligations.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and I appreciate that she is coming to a close. She began her speech by saying that crime had fallen, and it is important that we have clarity on that point. I draw her attention to an exchange between the Policing Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) last week. My hon. Friend asked the Minister whether crime would spike when online crime was added to the statistics. The Minister said:
“The National Audit Office suggested that that would be the case, and we have to accept that.”—[Official Report, 1 March 2016; Vol. 606, c. 917.]
Was the Minister right to say that, and will crime go up when those figures are added?
Mrs May
The statement that I made about crime falling is based on the independent crime survey of England and Wales. That shows clearly that crime has fallen since 2010 by more than a quarter. What we are now doing is recognising that certain types of crime have not been fully recorded in the past. Cybercrime did not suddenly start in May 2015. Cybercrime and fraud took place under the last Labour Government as well as under subsequent Governments. We are now recording those figures and ensuring that they are available to the public. I welcome the fact that we are being open with people about different sorts of crimes that have been committed in the past but were hidden under the last Labour Government.
Mrs May
I am virtually on my last sentence. The Bill will continue the Government’s commitment to reform public services, not for the sake of it but to deliver more responsive, accountable police forces that continue to cut crime and keep our communities safe. I commend the Bill to the House.
Andy Burnham
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can have been paying attention. We have just had an exchange in which the Home Secretary acknowledged that online crime is about to be added to the crime figures. As he may know from his constituency postbag, crime has changed in recent years. We have seen reductions in traditional volume crime—burglary, car crime—and crime has moved online. When Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and complacently say that crime has fallen, I am afraid that they are not representing the real picture. The real picture will look very different when the figures are published in a couple of months’ time.
Andy Burnham
There is a simple answer: because the current practice was recommended by the independent Office for National Statistics. The Home Secretary may want to take credit for everything, but I am afraid that she cannot do so. It was independently recommended, and just as the previous Labour Government accepted statisticians’ independent recommendations, so must she. The picture will soon look very different, and I caution her against the complacent statement, which she made again today, that crime has fallen. Crime has changed, and the figures will soon show that crime has in fact doubled.
Andy Burnham
Clearly the hon. Gentleman was not listening because I praised the role of police specials and said that there was a role for volunteers. I happen to believe, however, that it is not fair to put those volunteers in dangerous positions without the powers, without the training and without the resources to do the job properly. If he thinks that emergency services that are increasingly run by volunteers represents the right way for us to go, I can inform him that Opposition Members seriously disagree with him.
The most worrying part of the Bill is part 1, given its implications for the future of fire and rescue services. Fire services have already faced severe cuts over the past five years, and they face another five years of deep cuts to front-line services. Our worry is that the Bill could make them even more vulnerable and could lead to fire and rescue services disappearing altogether as separate services. There is a real concern that the proposals to put fire under the control of police and crime commissioners has simply not been thought through. I am sure that the Home Secretary agrees that this is a major change, so will she answer this question: where is the Green Paper or the White Paper examining the pros and cons for such a change to the governance of our emergency services?
Mrs May
Putting aside the fact that we consulted on collaboration between the police and fire services, the right hon. Gentleman says that he does not think that those services should come together, so perhaps he will explain why his colleague, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), said last October:
“I think that police and fire services logically sit within the context of a combined authority.”—[Official Report, 14 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 376.]
Andy Burnham
I am afraid that the Home Secretary needs to be corrected on a lot of that. First, although, yes, she did consult, she consulted purely on the process by which a PCC would take over fire, not the principle of whether they should do so. I stand entirely by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). A combined authority is not a police and crime commissioner; it is a very different thing altogether. Such a structure keeps fire within local government, which is where it has been for some time.
There is another reason why independence is important. The Home Secretary proposes a single-employer model, which could lead to the end of a separate fire service, but there are good reasons why the fire service has traditionally been separate from the police. In some inner-city areas with a history of tension with the police, the independence of the fire service is important because that means that the service can continue to operate even if there are difficulties or a stand-off with the police.
The Knight review considered the possible benefits of greater collaboration, which we support, and an expanded role for PCCs, but it also advised the Government to pilot the proposal carefully, given the complexity of governance. However, the Bill goes much further than that and, most worryingly of all, it takes away any say for local people. It effectively allows a PCC to make a case to the Home Secretary and then gives her full power to decide, thus completely cutting out the role of local elected representatives, not to mention the public. What on earth happened to the Government’s commitment to devolution? Just as with metro mayors, it looks like these expanded PCCs will be mandated from the centre. The Government have not made the case for changing the fire service in this way, and nor have they shown how the independence and funding of the fire service will be protected under the new system. The fire service, as the junior partner in the arrangement, will be more vulnerable to cuts.
I know that the concerns I have outlined are held by not only Labour councillors, but Conservative councillors, as the nods that I see from Government Members appear to indicate. I give notice tonight that unless the Government can show how fire services will be protected, with local people given the final say, Labour will vote on Report to oppose this ill-thought proposal. Our fire services have been chopped and changed enough. It is time to make a stand for the fire service and to show the thousands of dedicated firefighters that we recognise their important separate role. Rather than letting the service end up as a division of the police, which is what the Government seem to want, Labour will propose an alternative future for the fire and rescue service and how it responds to future challenges, which will include a statutory responsibility to deal with flooding.
I am sure that I have heard the Policing Minister say more than once that he used to be a fireman. Well, it seems that this former fireman has been given a mission—perhaps to lull people into a sense of false security—of overseeing the demise of the fire service as a separate entity. I can tell him tonight that we are not going to let it go without a fight.
James Morris
We have a very close relationship.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne has pointed out, in my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health I very much welcome the parts of the Bill that relate to sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. It is an issue in which I have long taken an interest in this House, and I had an Adjournment debate on it in Westminster Hall in 2013.
A number of people have influenced my thinking about the importance of the changes in the Bill, particularly as regards some of the work that has been done by West Midlands police. In particular, I want to mention Inspector Michael Brown, who has an interesting blog that other hon. Members might wish to look at. He is a mental health blogger and came to see me in my constituency office four or five years ago to talk about how the nature of policing was changing in society, the importance of dealing with mental health on the ground, and how the nature of policing meant that police officers were putting themselves in situations in which they were essentially having to make decisions about whether or not to use the powers under the Mental Health Act, as well as about whether they had the ability, knowledge and training to make such decisions.
If we look at the history of the Mental Health Act, we can see that it was initially conceived to cope with people who were absconding from asylums. It was updated in 1983, including through the section 135 and 136 provisions, and today’s changes are very important as the Mental Health Act needs to reflect the more modern experience of policing and of working with health professionals. Sometimes, we need to question whether we should go further in changing the Mental Health Act, because one downside of police officers specifically being given powers to detain people is that that raises issues to do with liberty and whether somebody is capable of making their own decisions, even when they are in mental health crisis. The fundamental point, which my hon. Friend also made, is that I do not think that any civilised person would say that there should be any circumstances in which a child suffering a mental health crisis ends up in a police cell. I welcome the changes to section 136.
The Bill also confers regulation-making powers on the Secretary of State to define when an adult should legitimately be placed in a police cell.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and particularly commend the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). Through the Bill we are trying to say—including to the other agencies to which the shadow Home Secretary referred—that a police cell or a police vehicle is not the place for someone in a mental health crisis. As the Ministers responsible for policing, we have to say that we are the port of last resort, not the port of first resort, which, I am afraid, is a situation that the section 135 and 136 legislation has got us into in some parts of the country. We need to get away from that.
James Morris
I thank the Minister for that intervention. He makes a powerful point. I have been a strong advocate of the street triage schemes that have been rolled out across the country. I was taken out by the street triage team in Birmingham and sped on a blue light to the centre of Birmingham, where a man was threatening to throw himself off the new Birmingham library. As the Minister knows, street triage is an effective combination of a police officer and a trained psychiatric nurse, both of whom present themselves at the point of crisis. That is the way we need to go, where we do more to get the police working with health professionals.
Mike Penning
I apologise for further delaying the House. Where it has not been possible for whatever reason to get the street triage team to the scene, we can have mental health professionals in custody suites. That point of entry gets around the data protection issues and people, who often know the mental health professionals, can be treated in a completely different, more civilised way, as we would expect our constituents to be treated.
James Morris
The Minister makes an excellent point. We need greater integration between policing and health. It should not be part of policing for police officers to make crucial decisions about an individual’s psychiatric state.
Mike Penning
When I took over the policing responsibility 18 months ago, I asked for the previous reports by the Home Affairs Committee—they had been gathering dust because there were quite a few. What has really and truly happened is that we have cherry-picked what was feasible and what we could deliver, and we have placed it in the Bill—with the help of the Home Secretary’s PPS.
Keith Vaz
I thank the Minister, and I say to him that he should carry on cherry-picking if that results in changes that find favour with both sides of the House.
On mental health, the Bill will ban the use of police cells as places of safety for under-18s, and the Committee has never believed that they are the right place for such people. I acknowledge the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has also campaigned on these issues over a number of years. He is one of those who have always said that people with such illnesses should be in police cells only in exceptional cases. That applies, of course, to children, but also to adults.
The Committee likes the idea of police officers consulting members of the medical profession before removing a person to a place of safety, and we think it is right that there should be a maximum period of detention.
Mike Penning
I wonder whether the Home Affairs Committee Chairman would agree that that does not need to be in statute. Surely it is simply common sense for the investigating officers to do such a thing, because this is not just about Paul Gambaccini—there were lots of others. The reason we have not put that in the Bill is that neither I nor the Home Secretary see the need for it to be on the statute book—it is just the common-decency way to treat people.
Keith Vaz
What the Minister has said today is extremely powerful and important, and it will give great comfort to people such as Paul Gambaccini. That is a common-sense approach to the cases of people have been on bail continuously but where no evidence is then found. People should conduct these investigations in a timely fashion. What the Minister has said will be something we can use as an example of good practice.
The shadow Home Secretary, who is not in his place at the moment, mentioned the case of Siddhartha Dhar, whose sister came to give evidence to the Committee—it was an emotional time, but it was important evidence. We were concerned that his passport was not handed over when he became a suspect. The police actually sent him a letter asking him to come along and surrender it; of course, by then, he had left the country—he had booked his departure, got on a coach with his family and crossed the border, and he was gone. He is probably still in Syria, although we do not know for sure.
The Minister may think this is also a matter of common sense rather than statute, but it is important, where we have terrorist suspects, as the shadow Home Secretary said, that we insist on their passports being handed over when they are in the custody suite; we should not wait to write to them and say, “Please will you hand over your passport?” because they will have used the opportunity to leave the country, as Mr Dhar did.
This may be a matter of common sense rather than statute—this is not a criticism of individuals, but us looking at a system—but many years ago we said to the Justice Department, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to ask a foreign national prisoner to surrender their passport to the court at the time of sentence?” The Prime Minister has now said that that is a very good idea and we must ensure that it happens.
Those are common-sense suggestions. I know it requires a whole inquiry by the Home Affairs Committee to come up with them, but why have they not been implemented before? That is my concern. I welcome absolutely what is being done on police bail—it is the right course of action—but the handover of passports is very important. The Committee has been trying for some time to get the new director general of the Passport Office in. He has so far eluded us, but we will write to him again and remind him that he needs to come in; otherwise, we will be writing a very stern letter. He has an important contribution to make to this debate. When the Prime Minister appeared before the Liaison Committee, he also said he would look at these issues.
I welcome what is being suggested with regard to the reform of the Police Federation. Its new management, if I can call them that, have made substantial changes. It is right that the federation’s core purpose should be amended to include a commitment to acting in the public interest. However, a recent letter from the chief executive and the chairman touched on some of the promises made about returning subscriptions to police officers because the federation had amassed huge reserves. I know the Policing Minister loves talking about reserves, and the federation had amassed quite a lot of reserves, so the Committee suggested that it hand some of them back to PCs, rather than collecting more subs. We also suggested that a smaller amount be spent on legal action, because the federation is spending quite a lot on supporting legal action. The Bill helps us along that road, and I hope that the other issues—the Bill does not mention reserves—will also be looked at.
The fifth area where the Bill implements recommendations by the Select Committee is police integrity. We are pleased that there will be a new statutory police barred list for officers and staff who have been dismissed, and that a police advisory list of those who are under investigation for matters amounting to gross misconduct is also included in the Bill. The Bill also places a duty on senior officers and policing bodies to check job applicants against the list before employing them and to report to the College of Policing.
Shortly the Committee will open up a review of the work of the College of Policing, and Alex Marshall will be coming before us. The Home Secretary talked about the massive changes she has made, and no Home Secretary has ever made such dramatic changes to the landscape of policing. However, I think we have neglected the College of Policing. I rate it very highly, and I think Alex Marshall is an excellent chief executive. We need to call it the Royal College of Policing. We need to make sure it stands on a par with some of the other royal colleges, such as the Royal College of Nursing, and with the British Medical Association and other organisations. I think we are getting there.
Mike Penning
Because the college was absolutely brand new, we first had to get it established, bedded down and gaining the confidence that the Chair of the Select Committee has referred to. There are more powers for the college in the Bill, and it will evolve, but it was brand new and it had to have confidence of people across the country, particularly that of the police.
Keith Vaz
I hope that we will look at some of these issues when we come to review the work of the college in the next Session.
I support what is being done on police complaints. As I have sometimes said to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, perhaps the police at a local level could adopt the John Lewis approach—“If there is a complaint, try and sort it out.” When members of the public complain about us, as I am sure they do very rarely [Interruption]—yes, it does happen—we take that more seriously than we do letters of praise, because we want to get the system right. If somebody complains that we did not spend enough time with them at a surgery or they are unhappy with a letter that we have sent, we spend a disproportionate amount of time on that—more than we do on other members of the public. Sometimes it is better to say, “Sorry, we got it wrong”, at a local level. Not everyone can have the privilege of coming before the House and saying sorry in such a public way, as the Minister did on the police funding formula, but he did it and he survived, and he has grown stronger as a result. The police should do this at a local level. I have a bit of an open mind about some of the suggestions, but a time limit is absolutely vital: we cannot have things going on for ever and ever.
I fully support what the Government are doing on firearms, although, to reiterate the Committee’s previous recommendations, we think that there are too many pieces of legislation relating to firearms and they should be consolidated in one Act of Parliament rather than be found in different places. I think that Opposition Front Benchers will be very open to a suggestion of consolidation, because it is quite difficult to find every single piece of information.
On collaboration with the fire service, I take a different view from the shadow Home Secretary. I have an open mind about this. Better collaboration between the emergency services might help local people. I suppose I am driven by the fact that, on 14 January, 10 ambulances were parked outside Leicester Royal Infirmary delivering patients and not collecting them. We have only 25 ambulances in the whole of Leicestershire, so to find 10 outside the infirmary made me worry about our emergency services system. I am open to persuasion. I am happy to look at this carefully, and I am sure the Committee will also want to look at it to see whether it will work. The hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), who is here, is the former chairman of the fire authority for London, and perhaps we will call on him to give evidence, if he is free. We want a system that is going to work; we do not want to amalgamate and collaborate and then the whole thing collapses. We want the system to be better rather than worse.
I also have a bit of an open mind about volunteers. We do need a professional police service. We need to be careful about using volunteers, because there are issues of vetting and of who should be accepted. Of course, the idea that the public should be part of policing is very important—it is all about Neighbourhood Watch. I do not see as many of those signs in Leicester these days. There are lots of photographs of Vardy and Mahrez on lamp-posts, but not many signs about neighbourhood policing—I had to get that in somewhere, Mr Deputy Speaker. We need to tread carefully with regard to volunteers. If we do that, we can get a better police service.
I do not want to open up a new debate on the police funding formula, because that will only encourage the Minister to mention it again when he winds up, but we do need a timetable on police funding. The Minister said that he was waiting for the review from the National Police Chiefs Council. I have written to Sara Thornton to ask her whether she thinks her review will somehow stall what the Minister proposes to do. I will await her response and we will of course publish that letter. All this has to be paid for. We have new legislation—those of us who have been in this House for a number of years will have seen policing Bills before—but in the end it all costs. We need to sort out the issue of funding, because we do not want to end up being bitten by having good legislation that is supported by the whole House and being unable to pay for it. I hope that we will look at that in future.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to follow the considered speech of the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry). He was brave and absolutely right to add to the calls to extend the 12-month period. I sincerely hope that the Government will agree to do that on Report.
The public put a huge amount of trust in the integrity and professionalism of the police, and rightly so, but nobody is infallible. When the police mess up, the public want to know that they will be held properly to account. Public confidence is vital for effective policing, and police accountability has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. It is easy to forget that it was only in 2002 that the last Labour Government set up the IPCC in response to the Stephen Lawrence case. That was a huge step forward, but compared with other public services the police remain under-scrutinised. Too many investigations are carried out behind closed doors. Too many reports are supressed. Too many officers take retirement rather than taking the rap for their mistakes.
Some clauses in the Bill will make real progress on a lot of those issues, and that is welcome. The widening of the definition of a complaint in clause 11 is sensible, and will, I hope, allow greater scrutiny. It is good to see that officers will no longer be able to dismiss complaints as fanciful without recording them. Most welcome is the beefed-up role of the IPCC in investigating complaints. The fact that it had to wait for a referral before acting was always perverse, and I am glad that it will now be able to act with greater freedom when it thinks that wrongdoing has occurred. The move from managed to directed investigations with more IPCC oversight is also a step in the right direction for transparency and accountability. It is right that the IPCC will now be required to investigate all cases that involve chief officers.
The House will be aware of the tragic case of Poppi Worthington in my constituency. I have raised it a number of times on the Floor of the House, and I know that the Ministers on the Front Bench are well aware of it. The failings of the police in Cumbria in the aftermath of Poppi’s death are deeply troubling. Not only has the case raised questions about the conduct of my local force, but it prompts wider questions about the overall system and structure by which the police are held to account. I am concerned that for all the positive steps they contain, the proposals represent a missed opportunity to deal with those issues.
I want to raise three specific issues: first, the information that is available to police and crime commissioners to allow them to perform their roles effectively; secondly, the disciplinary processes and the role of the IPCC; and, thirdly, new rules for officers who leave the force. In Cumbria, we have just welcomed back Jerry Graham as our chief constable following a leave of absence for ill health. In his absence, the deputy chief constable, Michelle Skeer, acted up in his position. That is normal procedure, and it meant that Ms Skeer was at the helm in recent months, during the revelations about Poppi’s death. The problem is that she was also one of the officers criticised by the IPCC in its report into police failures in the Poppi case. That report has still not been published, and I maintain that it should be made public immediately.
Not only was Ms Skeer criticised, but the police and crime commissioner was not made aware of the IPCC’s findings when he confirmed her appointment as the acting chief constable. I understand that it is often a formality for the deputy to act up when the chief constable is laid low, and in the vast majority of cases that will make sense, but it requires oversight and confirmation by the police and crime commissioner. Otherwise, what are they there for? Surely the Government must agree that in that case, it was inappropriate for Ms Skeer to act up without the commissioner being apprised of the findings of the case against her. It must be possible to address that problem in the Bill. That has not happened yet, but there is a clear opportunity to do so on Report if the Government have the will to act.
For an officer to head a force, and to have oversight of all disciplinary matters, when she has been heavily criticised by the IPCC is highly problematic. It looks wrong to the public, and it damages trust. That situation should never be allowed to occur again, but I see nothing in the Bill to correct that flaw in the original procedures. Should not police and crime commissioners be provided, as a matter of routine, with draft IPCC reports, even when the reports cannot be published for legal reasons? When the decision is made to appoint a chief constable or a deputy, or to allow people to act up in those roles, the IPCC ought to give the police and crime commissioner all the relevant information about as yet unpublished investigations into that individual, even if that information is available only in draft form. If commissioners are to be more than simply window dressing, sustained at considerable expense to the taxpayer, they need to be able to access the information that allows them to do their jobs properly.
On discipline, the Bill is surely an opportunity to improve the current processes.
Mike Penning
I thought it might be useful to say at this point that the Under-Secretary of State and I, having listened to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and the other contributions, will look carefully to see whether we can address in Committee or on Report the concerns that he has sensibly raised around that issue. One way or another, we will try as best we possibly can to address the matter in the Bill.
John Woodcock
I thank the Minister for intervening now, rather than waiting until his summation. What he has said is really welcome.
If I can find my place, I will continue what I was saying about discipline. One reason that I have been given for the continued suppression of the report in the Poppi case is that disciplinary action is still ongoing against two officers. However, the draft report was available to Cumbria constabulary exactly a year ago. The IPCC has said that it is “extremely surprised” at the delay, but it appears to have no ability to compel the force to get on with the process. We are left with a situation in which a force is in control of the disciplinary process, but by delaying that process it can hold up the publication of a report that is critical of that force. I am not saying necessarily that Cumbria constabulary is deliberately doing so, but that is clearly the effect. That cannot be right. Surely, the IPCC could appropriately be given more power to compel a force to complete disciplinary action in good time, rather than ending up with a situation such as we have in Cumbria.
Finally, I want to address what happens when officers retire or resign from the force when they are facing disciplinary action, as several hon. Members have mentioned. There has rightly been focus on the length of time for which a former officer can still face disciplinary proceedings after leaving, and whether 12 months is sufficient. The shadow Home Secretary has compellingly set out why it is not, and he has already been joined in expressing that view by one Conservative Member. I also want to focus on the suggested sanctions. Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I have raised the matter with the shadow Home Secretary.
My clear reading of the legislation is that where an officer retires before disciplinary proceedings against them can be triggered, within the 12 months or whatever period is set out—they can now, for the first time, be found guilty of misconduct, which is a real step forward and should be welcomed—the only sanction currently proposed is to put them on a list that will prevent them from working in the police force again. However, as they have just retired, which was how they have sought to escape justice in relation to any misconduct, telling them that they cannot come out of retirement is surely no kind of deterrent whatever. I very much hope that can be reconsidered in Committee.
John Woodcock
The sanction would not be more extreme because there is no chance of any workplace sanction after that. In the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he can tell me what he thinks the effect on public confidence in the police would be if someone guilty of misconduct—at Hillsborough, Orgreave or in one of the many other cases—was merely put on a list preventing them from serving again, rather than having any other sanction imposed on them. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary mentioned the prospect of being able to reduce the pension entitlement of retired officers in certain circumstances, which I hope the Minister will consider carefully.
Mike Penning
One of my very sad but important duties is to remove a pension from an officer because they have committed certain types of offence. Sadly, I have to do that weekly. There is already such a sanction, and others, including criminal sanctions, can also be taken. The ability to remove a pension is already in statute.
John Woodcock
But what if they have retired?
I am getting into the rather unusual situation of wanting to ask questions of the Minister who has intervened on me. If my understanding is wrong, I hope he will point that out now or in his summation, but I understood that the only sanction available for an officer who had already retired was not to reduce their pension further, but simply to put them on a list to prevent them from going back to the job from which they had retired to escape accountability.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend is exactly right. As he knows, a gold commander will be appointed, and more often than not it is the senior police officer in charge of the incident. Control is taken, certainly in London, through the control room, in tandem with the fire office and other emergency services required. The system already operates in emergencies, and the fact that we are having to outline that in legislation seems extraordinary, although nevertheless necessary.
When I was chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, I was astonished by the sheer time involved in dealing with complaints. There were reams of paper and endless committee meetings. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) sat through hours and hours of many of those complaints hearings, some of which were frivolous and some not, but all of which, hopefully, were taken seriously. Any measure that streamlines the complaints system should be welcomed by all, police officers included.
I think that the idea of super-complaints is a knockout. As chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and deputy Mayor for policing, I would receive, endlessly, what were essentially super-complaints from charities and other organisations claiming that systematic problems involving the police needed to be addressed. If we could find a way of organising mini-inquiries into some of those issues—which is, essentially, what super-complaints would be—we might secure quicker resolutions.
One of the big issues, which the police themselves resolved in the end, was the investigation of rape. It became clear that the way in which the police investigated rape was seriously deficient, and that rape victims were not being dealt with properly at the front end—the inquiry desk at the police station. Once the mounting voices of complaints became so loud that the police had to do something, strangely enough, we secured change straight away. I think that if a charity involved in women’s welfare, or indeed men’s welfare, were able to lodge a super-complaint—rather like the Office of Fair Trading, or the Competition and Markets Authority—the issues could be resolved much more swiftly.
There is no doubt that one of the things that have undermined confidence in the police is the idea that someone can resign just before being subject to disciplinary action. We have seen police officers do that time and again, and they are often in collusion with a leadership that does not want to become involved in a significant inquiry into someone’s conduct. The extension by 12 months seems about right to me. There might be a case for 24 or 36 months, although I think that a lifetime might make matters more rather than less complicated. The extension beyond retirement is certainly welcome.
There will be rejoicing across the land at the final abolition of the Association of Chief Police Officers, in word if not in deed. It is great to see ACPO finally erased from the statute book, for all sorts of reasons. However, there is one small tweak that I would quite like the Minister to consider. One of the duties that are to be transferred to the new Chief Officers Council, or whatever it is called, is the requirement to co-ordinate the national police response to national emergencies. I was on the eighth floor of Scotland Yard on the Monday night of the 2011 riots, listening to the present Metropolitan Police Commissioner—who was then acting Deputy Commissioner—ringing all his mates in the police forces and asking whether they had any spare coppers to deal with the riot as 22 of London’s 23 boroughs went up in flames. It became clear to me that the idea of voluntary co-ordination was never going to be entirely seamless. I think that devising some method of compelling police forces, in extremis, to send officers to the aid of cities, or other areas, that needed them—rather than that being done on the basis of an understanding between police forces—would be useful for future resilience.
I welcome the proposed changes in the treatment of 17-year-olds in police custody. I think we are slowly beginning to realise that 16 and 17-year-olds are in a particular position of vulnerability: that they are still children in the eyes of the law, but are being treated inconsistently with that. The changes in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that will allow them to be treated as children, and given the protections that are afforded to children, are extremely welcome. They weave into a general theme, which is building up in the House and which has been mentioned earlier in the debate, concerning the status of 16 and 17-year-olds in the law generally. Like the Children’s Society, I believe that we should extend protections to that group.
I also think that we should consider extending child abduction warning notices to 17-year-olds, because they are often useful in that context. Either during the later stages of this Bill or during the stages of a sentencing Bill, if one is forthcoming, I shall be looking into the possibility of protecting those children through a general aggravated sentencing framework relating to offences against children, as well as the possibility of extending sentencing for child cruelty.
I greatly welcome the extension and strengthening of licensing conditions. I think that it is a fantastic move. As we all know, alcohol is an enormous driver of offending, and an enormous absorber of police time. The recent pilot trialling the alcohol abstinence monitoring orders in Croydon was so successful that the Minister has extended it to the whole of London, and we hope that it will subsequently be extended to the rest of the United Kingdom. However, there are a couple of tweaks that I would like the Minister to consider, because I think that they could make this tool really effective.
The first of those tweaks relates to police bail. Conditions apply to it, but, at present, none of them is a requirement to abstain from alcohol. I think that a huge volume of work that is currently dealt with in magistrates courts and beyond could be removed if the police could offer offenders the option of police bail on condition that they wore an alcohol monitoring bracelet for one, two or three months. If offenders breached that requirement, they would effectively be breaking the terms of their bail, and could end up in the criminal justice system as they did before. Vast swathes of paperwork in the magistrates courts would be reduced at a stroke. The police would have the power to manage alcohol on a real-time basis in their own communities.
Mike Penning
One of the privileges of being the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice is being part of the Ministry of Justice as well as the Home Office. What my hon. Friend is talking about, essentially, are out-of-court disposals, and I think that we are moving in that direction rather than in the direction of police bail when it comes to such matters as sobriety bracelets.
Kit Malthouse
I welcome the Minister’s support. He has been a great proponent of the use of such bracelets, and I think that one of his first acts in office was to extend their use. I do not really mind how the bracelets get on to a person’s ankle. We know from the Croydon pilot that they are 92% effective. I do not mind whether this is done by means of out-of-court disposal or police bail, as long as it is done swiftly. We know that the best kind of criminal justice is swift and certain, and the bracelets are exactly that.
In the context of alcohol abstinence monitoring orders, there is another tweak that I should like the Minister to consider. In the United States, a system has been highly successful, and is spreading across the whole country like a virus. Authorities are allowed to charge for physical testing. People turn up twice a day to blow into bags to prove that they have not been drinking, and they pay a buck a test, which finances the whole project. It is self-financing: the polluter pays. That is a brilliant principle. We do not have such a power in this country, but it would be wonderful if we could insert it in the Bill. In the case of the pilot in London, the Mayor had to put in half a million quid and the Secretary of State for Justice had to put in another half a million. Instead, we could start this project and charge the criminals for their own disposal. Surely that makes sense. The money is money that those people would be spending on alcohol anyway, and they would be saving it because they would not be drinking: they would be wearing the bracelets. We know that the model works in the United States.
I am a great supporter of the Bill. I shall be monitoring its progress during all its stages over the next few weeks, and I hope that the small and helpful tweaks that I have suggested will somehow make it into a Bill which, as a result, would go from being good to being great.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
I say genuinely that this has been a really good and sensible debate, and it has been conducted in the correct tone, apart from some of the bits in the speech of the shadow Policing Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). Let us take the bits we agree on and work from there.
I was slightly surprised to hear the shadow Home Secretary say that we should do more. Anybody would think that this Government had been in power for 20 years—they probably will be—but his party had 13 years to modernise the police force and the other emergency services.
I thought there was a slightly critical tone about the fact that I used to be a firefighter. I am very proud of that and it is an obvious thing for me to mention, just as colleagues across the House mention specialist roles that they have held. When I was in the fire service, I wanted to protect the public better and to have the same skills, equipment and emergency services as other countries. This Bill will help address that. It will not be done on the cheap. We need to ask whether we need two chief executive officers, two finance directors and two health and safety officers. Do we need so much bureaucracy at the top of our emergency services taking money away from the frontline? We see examples around the country of collaboration taking place, but there are also examples of collaboration not taking place. That is why the Bill is very important.
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee apologised to me for the fact that he would not be back for the wind-ups, but he said some very important things about the need for public confidence in the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Common sense is needed. It is clear that more complaints could be dealt with at constabulary level. That will often mean just saying, “Sorry, we got it wrong. We didn’t intend to get it wrong —that’s the last thing in the world we wanted to do.” It is important to say very early on that only serious offences should get to the IPCC. The Home Secretary and I were just telling each other that we will need to table a lot of amendments in Committee to remove the word “commission”. Further amendments will also be tabled.
The Bill is not perfect. I could accuse Labour Front Benchers of moaning, but I will not—I am trying to work collaboratively. The fire service needs to work more closely with the police, the ambulance service, the coastguard and other emergency services. We need to make sure that we get more for the taxpayers’ buck. [Interruption.] That is enough chuntering from Labour Front Benchers. Let us see what we can get.
Rather than address what is coming from Labour Front Benchers at the moment, I will address some of the points that were made during the sensible part of the debate. Mental illness is no different from any other illness, and it must be treated as such. For too many years, the police force has been used as the first, rather than last, point of call. Even though police officers are well trained and do good work on our behalf, they are not mental health professionals. They are also not experts on many other conditions, including learning difficulties. Sometimes we have to use them to provide a place of safety, but that should not be the case. Unless we actually put a stop to that and say, “Enough is enough,” we will not get the provision we need from other agencies. That is a really important part of the changes. The firearms changes have been needed for some considerable time, and we can work together on those.
I say to the Scottish National party that we will work closely with the Scottish Parliament. There was no consensus at all among political parties on the Silk commission, which is why we are in the position we are in. There was no consensus on the Silk commission between the Labour party in Wales and the Labour party in this House, so how could we have got consensus on the matter? As we go into Committee, let us work on what we can work on to try to make the Bill better. Let us not decry our emergency services and say that they cannot work together, because they can.
Mike Penning
No; I am going to conclude. On that point, in a debate that has been particularly important, let us make sure that we deliver what the public sent us to do, rather than sitting here and moaning at each other.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Policing and Crime Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Policing and Crime Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 14 April.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration and proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Jackie Doyle-Price.)
Question agreed to.