Police Forces

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I was not going to speak this morning, but before the winding-up speeches, I want to respond to a few points that have been raised. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) mentioned the 12% savings suggested by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary. We can have a political argument about whether cuts should be 12% or 20%, but as many people have asked—certainly in my constituency—if savings of more than £1 billion a year can be so easily identified, why have they not already been made over the past 10 or 15 years? Clearly, there is a lot of fat in the system and savings can be made. An analogy was made between that system and MPs and their researchers, and it was asked how we could do our jobs without back-office staff. Is it suggested that no savings whatever can be made? Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has identified savings of 12%.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burley]

I will give way in a moment. Do people think that police forces cannot work more efficiently and be less bureaucratic, that we cannot get rid of some form filling and red tape, and that there cannot be greater efficiencies in procurement and when buying IT systems? I suggest to hon. Members that a lot of efficiencies can be made.

[Mr Burley]

I am sorry; I said that I would give way to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley).

[Barbara Keeley]

The cuts announced in Greater Manchester last week will affect 900 jobs, including crime scene investigators, forensic scientists and call handlers. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the second largest police force in the country can support the loss of hundreds of such jobs?

[Mr Burley]

As I said, it is up to individual police forces to manage their work forces and budgets. For example, my constituency is in Staffordshire, where numbers of police officers are not being cut. Instead, the police estate has been reduced—quite controversially, given some of the comments about police buildings—and the number of police stations has been rationalised from nine to six. Locally, there has been an outcry over the closure of three stations, but the chief constable suggested that instead of having nine stations that are half used, under-utilised, dilapidated and made of old Victorian bricks, and which cost £1 million a year to maintain, it would be better to close three stations and put the money into front-line services, PCSOs and the police officers mentioned by the hon. Lady. It is easy to jump on the bandwagon on closing police stations, but the most forward-thinking forces manage their budgets and staff in an innovative way that protects the front line and reduces costs in other areas.

Police numbers have been mentioned several times. Let us be clear: the Labour party refused to guarantee police numbers at the last election. As hon. Members know, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) was famously asked by Andrew Neil whether he could guarantee police numbers, and his response was no. When the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) begins the winding-up speeches, perhaps he will tell us how many police officers would be cut under the Labour party’s proposals to cut by 12% rather than 20%.

There has been some debate about the front line, but an agreed definition of what constitutes the front line does exist. HMIC has stated that about 68% of police staff are involved in every day, visible contact with the public or specialist roles to keep people safe and within the law. That is the definition of the front line. It is important because some of the toughest front-line roles that I have seen in the police force are carried out not on the streets but on computers in police stations by those who watch hard-core pornography involving children being tortured and murdered. To me, that is the hardest front-line job within the police force.

I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) to point out that there is a difference in the roles done by police officers. I often hear comments such as, “If I am on the front line, there is a fight in a pub, it is pouring with rain and I am running towards that fight, I know that I will possibly get a kicking and be spat at.” That is a front-line, hard role in a big fight between drunk men in a pub on a Saturday night, and there is a difference between that and people sitting in a station working a nine-to-five shift. Front-line officers say that it is unfair that those in the stations are often paid more than those who run to the fight in a pub on a Saturday night, because they have done 10 years in the police service with an automatic pay increase every year. There are different roles within the police force, and I do not see a problem with people being paid according to the difficulty of their role. If people disagree with me about that, I would be interested to hear from them.

I will make just two final points to allow the Minister and the shadow Minister time to respond. First, on pay and conditions, it is not true that most police officers will face a £4,000 cut; a lot of officers will actually have a pay increase under Winsor’s proposals because they will be doing front-line duties. At the time of the last police review—such reviews seem to happen every 20 or 25 years—a special payment for front-line duties was given to about 89% of officers and rolled into the general salary. It could be argued therefore that the police already receive an extra 9% pay on top of their basic salary. Winsor could have removed that compounded extra payment, but instead he left it in the basic salary and proposed an extra increase in pay for some officers, based on the difficulty of their job and whether they are on the front line. The police get a fairly good deal, and some will get an even better deal under the proposals. Some, of course, will lose out because they are not undertaking difficult roles on the front line.

As I pointed out, there is amazing job security in the police service, and that should be reflected in the pay and conditions. I challenge any hon. Member to intervene on me and tell me another public sector job that someone can join aged 18, from which they cannot be made redundant—other than for gross negligence—and from which they can retire after 30 years, often as early as age 48, on two-thirds of their salary for the rest of their life. There is no single comparable job in the public sector.

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[Mr Burley]

I think the police have a lot of perks; I pointed out that the retirement conditions are a unique condition. Does the hon. Lady say that being in the Army, Air Force or the Navy is somehow less dangerous? Surely, fighting in Afghanistan is more dangerous than a lot of police jobs. The job security in the police service is unique in the public sector, as is the fact that police officers cannot be made redundant.

In answer to the hon. Lady, yes, I think that the police should change their terms and conditions. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made a fair point when he alluded to the fact that if, as we are now seeing, chief constables have to manage their work force and make reductions in the head count, the only people whom they can make redundant are police staff and PCSOs. Those people have different terms and conditions from police officers, who are warranted officers of the Crown, and that is unfair. All hon. Members would agree that we need a mixed work force in the police; we need police staff, PCSOs and police officers. It is unfair on staff and PCSOs that their terms and conditions mean that, in times of cuts, they are inevitably the only people who can be made redundant. Chief constables are not able to get rid of some of the dead wood, as they may wish. If we believe in a mixed work force in the police, we should believe in the same terms and conditions for all parts of that work force.

[Barbara Keeley]

We are talking about regulation A19 of the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 and the retiring of experienced police officers. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with the constituent who came to see me, who finds himself, after four years, as the most experienced police officer in his unit and who was forced, as many police officers now are, to contact officers who had been retired through the A19 process to pick their brains about cases with which he was dealing. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that contributes to effective policing?

[Mr Burley]

No, I do not. A good chief constable should not be retiring officers who have such experience and who they think can make a huge contribution to their force. The point, as I said earlier, is that they do not have to do that. The Government are not forcing any police force to retire officers with loads of experience, and the best forces are not doing that. However, the point remains that they have to deal with the cuts.

We are not blaming police forces. We are not blaming Chris Sims for getting rid of his officers with 30 years’ experience. Police forces have to deal with the massive budget deficit that the Labour Government left us, so it is the previous Government whom we are blaming for the cuts having to be imposed on police forces, which are doing their best to deal with them. We blame not the police forces or the chief constables, but the previous Labour Government.

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[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

Congratulations on your elevation, Sir Alan. I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important and timely debate. Everyone on both sides of the House recognises and applauds the vital work done by police officers, from chief constables such as Chris Sims to the most newly recruited PC on the streets. In the short time available to me, I want to address many of the issues that have been raised.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

I must apologise to the hon. Lady; I will not. I have eight minutes in which to respond to a very dense debate.

Our vision for policing can be expressed quite simply: the police have a clear mission to cut crime. Our entire approach is designed to support that mission through a comprehensive and clear programme of reform. There are four key elements to our programme: improving democratic accountability; ensuring greater transparency and engaged communities; increasing efficiency and value for money, and returning discretion to the professionals; and getting a stronger grip on serious, complex and organised crime.

Of course, reducing the budget deficit remains a priority, and the police service will have to play its part. A 12% cash reduction in central Government funding over four years, which is equivalent to 20% in real terms, is a challenging but manageable settlement for the police. In real terms, the average reduction in central Government funding to the police will be about 5.5% per year.

However, Government funding is not the only source of funding to the police. About a quarter of their funding comes from the police precept component of council tax. If the precept is increased in line with forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the spending review settlement will represent only a 6% cash reduction in total funding by 2014-15, which is equivalent to 14% in real terms. Those figures show that although the reductions are challenging, they also are achievable. By introducing the reforms I have mentioned, we will create a police service that is more efficient and responsive to local demands, despite the inevitable funding reductions that it will face in the coming years.

That touches on the central incoherence in the points made by the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who speaks for the Labour party. The former Police Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who performed that function admirably, admitted in public that the previous Government were going to cut police budgets. Subsequently, in one of the Opposition’s flirtations with honesty, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), announced that he would have had to introduce much more serious cuts across the board had he remained Chancellor after the election.

Although the former Chancellor was perfectly honest about the fact that he would have announced some cuts, and although former colleagues of his in the previous Government have admitted that the cuts they would have introduced would have been much bigger, the tone adopted by Opposition Members throughout the debate has been that any change or reform would be disastrous for the police service. Their approach is simply incoherent. Had the Labour party remained in government, they would not have taken that line.

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[Damian Green]

I am sorry, but I really have not got time.

That has happened as a result of central Government adding layers of bureaucracy to make up for the lack of local accountability. The Government have taken the lead in cutting interference from the centre in police business. We want to respect the police’s operational independence and to give them the space they need to deal with any problems. That is why we published a draft protocol setting out the roles and responsibilities of police and crime commissioners, chief constables, police and crime panels and the Home Secretary. The protocol was drawn up in discussion with, and has the full agreement of, ACPO, including Sir Huge Orde, the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives. It builds on recommendations from the Home Affairs Committee.

On top of that, we have axed many of the unnecessary bits of paperwork that had built up over the years. The policing pledge, public service agreement targets, performance indicators and local area agreements have all been scrapped. In their place has been put the one simple objective of cutting crime. The hon. Member for Gedling asked what we had done, and those measures are a significant answer.

We will continue to make decisions that improve the performance of the police and their relationship with the general public. Let me deal with that in detail. Mention was made of funding in Metropolitan police areas. The Metropolitan Police Service receives specific funding for its role of policing the capital. That funding comes in the form of national, international and capital city grant and totals £200 million this year. As with any force, we will consider requests for additional support where the costs involved in any single operation are significant and place an unmanageable burden on the Metropolitan police.

Inevitably, we have discussed the Winsor review extensively. The Government have been clear that action is needed to tackle the deficit, and the police service has its part to play. In an organisation such as the police, where pay is 80% of revenue expenditure, there is no question but that pay restraint and pay reform must form part of the package. Police officers should be rewarded fairly and reasonably for what they do. That is why the Home Secretary asked Tom Winsor to undertake his review. The review is not only about savings, but about making reforms to enable the introduction of modern management practices and to maximise officer and staff deployment to front-line roles, maintaining and improving the service to the public. The principles Tom Winsor sets out in his report provide the right framework, and we have referred his recommendations for short-term change to the relevant bodies for consideration.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

I am sorry, I really cannot.

We have talked a lot about whether the cuts can be achieved without damaging the front line. Denis O’Connor of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary estimated that £1.15 billion could be saved if the least efficient forces brought themselves up to the average level of efficiency. We want forces to reach the standards of the most efficient, not just the average.

There are also areas outside the remit of HMIC’s report, including Government and IT collaboration, where further savings can be made. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made an announcement about that yesterday, which will be significant. In terms of officers opting out of the pension scheme—