Police Funding

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I decided to join some of my colleagues in speaking in this debate because of the deep concern in the west midlands about the impact of reductions in police officers and support staff.

I apologise for missing one or two speeches, but I pay tribute to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) who, as we all know, chairs the Home Affairs Committee in such a distinguished manner. He made an effective speech, although he will not be surprised to hear that I cannot go along with his taking an “apolitical stance”. I am not aware that I have ever taken an apolitical stance, and it is rather late in the day for me to start! I am not point scoring today, however, although I am happy to do so on many other occasions.

I said in my opening remarks that people are very concerned in the west midlands, and it is for Members and Ministers to decide whether that feeling is genuine. I have had the privilege of representing my constituency of Walsall North for 31 years, and I have always been concerned—as one would expect of every hon. Member—that the police should be able to deal effectively and promptly with my constituents’ complaints about criminality.

The Minister states that there is no, or hardly any, correlation between the number of police officers and tackling criminality, but, like many Members, I simply do not accept that for a moment. There is a correlation. Common sense dictates that if we have fewer police officers, it is far more likely that crime will go undetected.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman, like me, is a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Bill Bratton, who appeared before our Committee on 30 November this year, said:

“As a police chief for many, many years, I would always like to have more police, but the reality is it is not just numbers but, more importantly, what you do with them.”

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that argument from someone who spent 40 years heading up the two biggest police forces in America?

[Mr Winnick]

It is common sense that a senior police officer will take the view that the way in which police officers are deployed is very important. No one disputes that for a moment, but did not Bill Bratton say on the very same occasion that he would have liked to have more police officers? The hon. Gentleman just said that.

Between 1997-98 and 2010-11, central Government funding for west midlands police rose by 36% in real terms. Let me ask those who are critical whether I am justified in raising concerns. No Conservative Member suggested at the time that less should be spent on policing in the west midlands. The money was spent not for the sake of it but to reduce criminality, which it did. We know that under the comprehensive spending review, police forces in England will receive 20% lower funding by 2014-15, and it is not likely that the west midlands will be any different.

I take it from the intervention of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) that some Conservative Members—not, I hope, all—do not consider police numbers important. Let me nevertheless cite the numbers for west midlands police, comparing the time Labour first took office with now. In 1996, there were 7,145 police officers. There was then a steady increase, and this year’s figure is 8,536. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Cannock Chase or any other Conservative Member would argue that those increases were unjustified and that there should not have been such a substantial increase.

If necessary, I could provide statistics to show that in the west midlands, as in the rest of Britain, crime has reduced—indeed, the Justice Secretary conceded the point yesterday. I find it difficult to believe, even though the Minister shakes his head in disagreement, that the reduction in crime in my region is not somehow connected with the 36% real-terms increase in police funding and the correlative increase in the number of police officers. There has also been a steady increase in the number of police community support officers since they were first established.

I am not one who always defends the actions of the police. I might well be critical of some aspects of policing the demonstrations today and tomorrow—so be it; we shall see. On one point, I am absolutely certain, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East also made it abundantly clear: when our constituents phone the police to report criminality they want effective action, not a prerecorded message with no action being taken for days. I do not suggest that all has been well, but spending less on police, with fewer police officers, will make our constituents’ problems much more difficult.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, in the west midlands, in the black country—not just Birmingham, but my borough, surrounding areas, and the other three black country boroughs—Members have been very pleased, on behalf of our constituents, first and foremost, by the reduction in criminality. Hon. Members may say that we are being too pessimistic, and I obviously hope that a reduction will not to lead to the reversal that many of us fear, but we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that the progress of the past few years is maintained, that our constituents are protected from criminality as much as possible, and that the police take effective action against criminality when it occurs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this constructive and well-mannered debate. Members on both sides of the House have expressed their genuine concerns in a fairly non-political way.

There has been much speculation today and in the past few weeks about the possible effects of the cuts. It is pure speculation because we still do not know what the individual settlements will be. It is disappointing to Members on the Government side that the Opposition still have not had the good grace to tell us where they would make their cuts. I thought that the answer given by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) when he was pushed on this issue was very interesting. Essentially, he said that he would go back to the Treasury to ask for more money, so perhaps the Opposition do not accept there should be any cuts whatever in policing. It would be interesting if that point were addressed in the winding-up speech.

I want to address an issue at the core of this debate—the effect that the reduction in funding will have on police numbers. I know that that is a totemic issue for the Opposition, and it is easy to understand why, because the Labour Government, in their 13 years in office, were very successful at one thing: persuading this country that only by pouring more money in can we get better results out. That is why the debate about policing has always focused on the number of police rather than what they do all day. [Interruption.] We have a record number—140,000—as someone shouts from a sedentary position, but seemingly, simply because we have record police numbers and PCSOs, Labour Members think we have record effective policing. That is simply not an equation that works.

Labour Members do not care whether police officers are on patrol, filling in forms or responding to jobs. They seem incapable of acknowledging that having more and more police officers doing more and more administrative and bureaucratic tasks does not mean better policing. Sadly for the Opposition, the debate has moved on. They need not take my word for it; they can take that of someone who knows more about policing and fighting crime than all of us in the Chamber put together—Bill Bratton, who was chief of police of the Los Angeles police department, of New York city and of Boston. He is famous across the world for putting the broken windows theory into practice. He introduced the CompStat system of tracking crimes, which is still in use today and massively reduced crime in New York city, where he devolved decision making to precinct level and got rid of a backlog of 50,000 unserved warrants. When he was chief of police in Los Angeles, crime within that city dropped for six consecutive years. In 2007, the LA police commission reappointed Bratton to a second five-year term, which was the first time it had made such a reappointment in almost 20 years.

It is fair to say that that guy knows what he is on about, and here is what he said to the Home Affairs Committee on 30 November. The Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East, said:

“There is a debate at the moment, obviously because of the current economic climate that will result in the numbers of police officers in a local area being reduced. Do you think there is any correlation between the numbers of officers in a particular area and the level of crime?”

Bill Bratton replied:

“As a police chief for many, many years, I would always like to have more police, but the reality is it is not just numbers but, more importantly, what you do with them. More is fine, but if they’re just standing around or if they’re not focused on issues of concern to the public, then those numbers are not… going to achieve what you would hope to achieve, which is improve public safety and reduce crime.”

[Steve McCabe]

It is only fair to say that Bill Bratton went on to caution the Select Committee against drawing too many conclusions from the American experience, because policing is organised very differently in the United States.

[Mr Burley]

I shall give another quote from what Bill Bratton said to us:

“So, I had 38,000 police officers in New York City. In Los Angeles I had 9,000. Los Angeles: 500 square miles, worst gang problem in America, 4 million residents. New York: 38,000 police officers, 300 square miles, 8 million residents, a drug crime problem. To have the equivalent of what I had in New York City in Los Angeles, I would need 18,000 police officers, I only had 9,000 but, over a seven-year period, every year crime went down in Los Angeles… the public perception of police and their effectiveness improved”,

which reinforced

“the adage: it’s not so much the numbers but how you use them, how you inspire them, how you direct them and what their priorities are.”

If it is not a matter of numbers, it is about what the police do all day, and the fact is that in this country the police spend a huge amount of time filling in forms. On 15 March 2007, I went out on the beat in Paddington with the Met, one of the more advanced forces in this country. This is what Met police have to fill in for a single domestic violence incident: a124D paper booklet in the victim’s house; an evidence and actions booklet, which is the same as an old pocketbook, but with structured questions; a custody record, in the station if someone is arrested, with the same details as are in the EAB, which they give to the custody sergeant to rekey into his computer system; a CRISS report, which is an electronic crime report filled in by the officer at the station and that is used for Home Office statistics; a MERLIN report, which involves a national computer system with details of vulnerable children from domestic violence backgrounds—the same details as in the first two forms; a CRIMINT report, which is a Met police-wide intelligence system; and the case papers—that is, the MG forms, which are Word documents that get sent to the Crown Prosecution Service for court. It is not uncommon in the Met and other police forces for officers to be off for the rest of the shift following one domestic violence incident arrest. That is what they are spending their time doing—this mad bureaucracy and paperwork. It is not about the number of police officers; it is about what they do all day on their shifts.

As we have heard recently, Home Office figures have revealed that officers now spend more time on paperwork than on patrol—just 14% of their time on patrol compared with 20% on paperwork. That is why I am delighted that this coalition, like Bill Bratton, is dealing with the reality of the cuts by focusing not on police numbers, but on what the police do all day. Only by clearing away this bureaucracy and these inefficient, wasteful practices will we get the police service that this country deserves.