The Chair
There is quite a lot to go at there. Who wants to start? Chief Superintendent Thomas.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I’ll have a go. In terms of efficiencies and accountability, I agree. Within the Bill at the moment there is a gap, which I think has been left open for consideration, around inspection and standards. At the moment, HMIC is the inspectorate body for the service. In terms of taking this forward, in my judgment it makes sense that if it comes under the arrangement of the PCC, both fire and police should come under the same inspectorate, to have the same standards and ultimately to have that transparency—that voice—for the public, which is what HMIC is, in terms of ensuring that the standards are maintained by both services. In my judgment, I urge the Committee to think about where that would place HMIC under that arrangement.
We have said already that there are efficiencies, and these are being demonstrated in areas of good practice across the country—in joint procurement, estate and so on. Ultimately, this is public money that we are trying to spend, so if we can get the best effect for the money we are spending to deliver services to the public, in my judgment that is good.
On your question about Wales and cross-border implications, there could potentially be some issues there. We have forces that border Welsh forces. My home force, Gloucestershire, neighbours Wales, but I cannot give you any specific examples that I can see of where there would be tensions. In terms of being professional, we would work through that on an everyday basis.
On first responders and culture, I agree with you. I said earlier that when you are talking about a big change, culture is always a key element, particularly in bringing two organisational cultures together to make things more effective. I think we are more open to new ideas. There was your example of first responders. There are examples outside this country where that has been done. Ireland has done some work on using that, and I think that was quoted in the consultation. We are open to that, but the point I was trying to make earlier is that the significant cultural issues within the two organisations should not be underestimated, and it would take some time to work through those if the arrangement came under a single PCC organisation.
Steve White: In relation to your first question, on accountability, in my 27 years of policing experience I have never seen working closely with the fire service as a particularly problematic issue. I have seen many issues with the police service trying very hard to collaborate with other agencies, such as social services and health. You could probably say that on a day-to-day basis we actually do more of that, and that is probably something that needs to be resolved on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to the accountability of the fire service and the police service. What about the way that we collaborate with social services? On a Friday at five o’clock, social services offices close their doors and then, all of a sudden, reports of missing people and children come in, and the police service has to deal with it. That is a much more important area of work, because we work very closely with the fire service. In terms of accountability, yes, of course there needs to be accountability around that.
I question whether a lot of PCCs actually have the physical ability to take on not just the work that they are doing in the police service, but the work with the fire service. I cannot answer that question, but much more thought and work needs to be done on other areas of collaboration that ought to work much more effectively. That is probably more important. To be fair, there is not an issue with the fire service—that is really what I am saying; we work really well together. There are the examples that I have mentioned about sharing some back-office functions, resources and workshops, and those will, of course, provide efficiencies. I am fairly relaxed about the other issue of first responders. We use the resources that we have and if we can have access to those resources and use them in a different way, I think that makes perfect sense.
On Welsh devolution, the position of the Police Federation of England and Wales is that the devolution of policing in Wales is a political decision, but that has to be taken in the round with the political context in Wales and what happens with further devolved powers for other areas there. I suggest that there needs to be some consistency, though, because again, the public can get awfully confused otherwise. There also needs to be a recognition that sometimes we require not just the police service, but the fire service, to deal with things outside their areas through some form of mutual aid, so it is important that we have consistency. Whoever is in charge of the fire service in Wales, or the fire service in England, we need to make sure that we have that consistency of standard and interoperability.
Ben Priestley: The Home Affairs Committee reviewed the progress that police and crime commissioners have made. When it published its report—albeit that was two years ago—the Committee said that it was too early to determine whether the introduction of police and crime commissioners had been a success. It said that even by 2016—this year—it would probably be too difficult to assess that and that it would need a further term. The Government are therefore pushing ahead on the PCC project very quickly. As Steve indicated, the question is whether the Bill is trying to fix a problem that does not actually exist. Given that collaboration is taking place and the current democratic structures appear to be working reasonably well, do police and crime commissioners have the capacity to take on this new role?
There is a bigger question about which roles the Government have decided to give to PCCs and which they have not. Two years ago the Government took the decision to break up the probation service in England and Wales and privatise most of it. That comes back to Steve’s point about which of the services the police service would partner with most naturally. Arguably, in terms of agency, the probation service is closer to the police service than the fire and rescue service is. Yet the Government made a clear decision to keep police and crime commissioners totally out of the procurement for the new contracts to provide probation services locally. They would not be given powers to commission services for the care and rehabilitation of offenders in communities, notwithstanding the close partnership between police and probation. We need to ask why the Government are doing this for the fire and rescue service when they did not do it for the probation service.
On democratic accountability, the Bill’s proposals about the future role of police and crime panels are not sketched out well. If the Government get their way on merging police and fire, there is no proposal in the Bill to rename the crime and policing panels. One would expect “fire” to at least appear in the title, if one were encouraging the public to understand what the new scrutiny body is doing. Perhaps we should even change the name of the police and crime commissioner; there is no mention of fire in his or her title.
However, I think that there is another issue about democracy that is more fundamental. It appears from the Bill that the Government, through the offices of the Secretary of State, will eventually be able to mandate merger in circumstances where a police and crime commissioner wants it, but where the fire and rescue authority does not. At the end of the day, the Government can mandate that. That is not good for democratic accountability, and it is certainly something that we, as a trade union, would want to challenge.
The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
I have sat and listened for a considerable time to the answers to the questions. I know four of you very well, although I do not know Mr Priestley at all. We have talked outside this room and I have seen huge amounts of collaboration taking place. What amazes me is that, when my colleague asked a moment ago, “Give me an example of where collaboration has worked”, there was almost complete silence from the federation and the Police Superintendents Association, although your members are out there doing it. There is a brand new fire station in Winchester that is also a police station, with an armed response unit in the yard. If the witnesses were outside this room and not on the panel, I am sure they would agree—because they have said so to me before—that it is very difficult when there are areas that refuse to collaborate. The purpose of the Bill is to bring that forward. When you were giving evidence a few moments ago, why did you not say that there is a huge amount of collaboration but it is not across the force? What really worried me is that, when asked about the effect on Wales, Mr Thomas said that yes, there would be an effect, but he had no idea what it would be. That is an unbelievable thing to say. When you said that there would be an effect on Wales, but could not tell us what it would be, what did you mean? Perhaps you could elaborate on the areas where collaboration is taking place very well and those where it is not, which the panel and you and I know to exist.
The Chair
There is a bit of a challenge there. We need to get responses, but I am anxious that we move on. There are many areas of the Bill that we have not yet covered.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: I will go back to what I said earlier. My overriding concern goes back to the comments on respecting previous collaboration arrangements and the experience of the citizen being different in different parts of the country, even in a neighbouring county—it goes back to the heart of the issue. The term “consistency” is used a lot in inspectorate reports at the moment. How do we get consistency? I am absolutely in favour of localism and local favour in delivering our services, but some of those services are absolutely critical to the safety of our fellow citizens, so getting a level of consistency across the country is a goal that we must achieve.
Going back to the point about Wales, the macro example is going to provide inconsistency because the Bill does not address that element with Wales and not England, so it does provide an element of inconsistency on that point. However, as Steve has just said, it is for the Welsh Assembly to make that decision.
Steve White: May I come back to the point on collaboration? I made the point that PFEW’s position is that collaboration could still work a lot better. I gave some examples where it is working effectively, but that is not to say that everything is working perfectly. You are right, Minister, that we have had conversations outside these rooms about some of the frustrations that our members bring to us where collaboration does not work as well as it should. In one of my previous answers I said there are a number of reasons for that: some of it is ego; some of it is political pressure; some of it is just trying to get people to work together. In the current structure of 43 forces, with 43 chiefs and 43 PCCs, it is sometimes very challenging to get them to agree on what they are going to let go in terms of control and how it is going to work.
The culture of the service is beginning to change. Yes, there are examples of good collaboration out there, but I still think that there are many more opportunities where collaboration could be even more effective, up to the point of reducing the number of forces we have in England and Wales, to make that collaboration and the efficiencies and learning that can be gained from it. Why do we still have a service that does things, in the vast of majority of instances, 43 different ways? It makes no sense.
Chief Superintendent Thomas: May I make a quick observation on that? Steve has just made a good point. Under the current arrangements, as I said earlier, the decision is made within the police and crime commissioner arrangements. The power to make a national decision around consistency is not there at the moment—it is a vacuum.