Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

Yes, as indeed I made clear in answer to a previous question. The definition of an immigrant is somebody who comes here for more than 12 months, so student visitor visas, like tourist visas, are for visitors, not for immigrants. They therefore do not come under immigration limits.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

T6. May I press the Home Secretary a little further on the 7/7 inquest? Like so many MPs in our constituencies on Friday, I was listening to the wall-to-wall coverage of the inquest and was struck by the harrowing stories of the survivors and the surviving family members. It has been nearly six years since the event. Can my right hon. Friend tell us, while we wait for the end of the formal response period, what lessons the security services have learned since the event?

[Mrs May]

As I said in response to the shadow Home Secretary, the Security Service has indeed made some changes since those events on 7 July 2005, has looked again at what is coming out of the inquest and will look with great care at the two specific proposals that are aimed at the Security Service in relation to the potential for further lessons to be learned. I draw the attention of my hon. Friend and the House, however, to Lady Justice Hallett’s words when she said that there was no evidence at all that the Security Service knew of and therefore failed to prevent the bombings on 7/7.

Government Reductions in Policing

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

In fact, at the time of the election unemployment was falling, the economy was growing and borrowing was lower than expected, whereas nearly 12 months on we have seen borrowing come in higher than expected, unemployment continue to rise and growth stall. The hon. Gentleman should, perhaps, consider those points when he thinks about the impact these foolish decisions are having on public services.

I was contacted last week by a local beat officer from the west midlands, and I want to read out what he said about the job he did:

“When I arrived it was a run-down, deprived area frequented by pimps, prostitutes, druggies and drug dealers. By working with the community we were able to change it into an area where the residents were happy to walk the streets at all times of the day and night. Crime was reduced and the feel-good factor returned. The local community saw me every day. If I wasn’t there, they would phone me. I was able to rebuild trust and confidence in the police. I was the single point of reference for them.

In 2010 I was awarded the ‘coppers’ copper award’ by the Police Federation…this spoke of my professionalism and dedication. Now I am being forced out and will not be replaced. Residents are up in arms and have even started a petition to keep me. These people know that in a very short space of time”

their area

“will return to what it used to be and they are frightened.

I believe I am good value for money...My presence prevents crime and antisocial behaviour. It makes people feel good. I’m totally devastated to be leaving as I feel that I have a number of good years in front of me doing the job I’m good at. I took an oath in 1979 and have stuck to it. Ultimately the people who will suffer are the public.”

Those are the words of one beat officer in the west midlands, who is at the sharp end. That is what it is really like on the front line of the Government’s 20% cuts in policing, and there is much more such evidence from across the country.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

One of the sharp-end decisions this Government have had to take is to deal with the economic legacy to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) referred. Is the biggest Budget deficit in the developed world part of that golden economic legacy that the right hon. Lady believes her party left to our country and Government?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady chose not to comment on the more than 100 police officers being lost from the Wiltshire force, as well as the more than 100 support jobs being lost from that force. I look forward to seeing her put that in her leaflet for the next election. As I have already pointed out, at the time of the election borrowing was, in fact, lower than expected and unemployment was falling. By cutting too far, too fast, the hon. Lady’s party is going to make it harder to cut the deficit, with more people on the dole and more spent on unemployment benefit.

From Nottinghamshire, another officer writes:

“Since 2006 when I took this office road casualties have fallen by 33%...that’s saved over £90 million in costs...I haven’t achieved this by myself for sure but we’ve contributed massively to that effort and now they want to get rid of me.”

Hampshire police have been forced to cut their domestic violence units. In Lancashire, they are reducing air-support cover. In Dorset, they are cutting traffic policing by 33%. In north Wales, they have cut back on the handlers and sniffer dogs for explosives. In the west midlands, neighbourhood policing teams are being lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

Of course we want to see more police officers out on the beat, and, in fact, that was the consequence of the policies of the Labour Government over many years. We also believe it is right for forces to do everything they can to improve their efficiency and to make sure they are supporting officers. However, in force after force and area after area we are seeing police officers, not just police staff, being lost: 12,500 officers to go. These are not our figures; they are figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers and individual police forces and police authorities across the country. There will be 12,500 fewer officers and 15,000 fewer support staff. That is the equivalent of the combined police strength of Yorkshire and Humberside, or the equivalent of the forces of Durham, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Surrey and Dorset combined.

[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Lady if she thinks it is really possible to make cuts of that scale to police forces and still have no impact on the front-line services that communities across the country receive.

[Claire Perry]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for her generosity in giving way for a second time. I am very interested in the statistics she is quoting, and I ask her for the source of the data she just gave suggesting that 100 officers were going in Wiltshire, because I have very frequent conversations with the chief constable of Wiltshire, and that is not a number that either he or I would recognise. Please can she tell us the source of the data?

[Yvette Cooper]

All the figures we have seen and released have come either from chief constables, police forces or police authorities. That is also where the figures of 12,500 fewer officers and 15,000 fewer support staff have come from. I know that Ministers have repeatedly refused to acknowledge those figures, but I hope they will take the opportunity of today’s debate to admit that police officer posts are being cut across the country. That is what happens when you cut too far, too fast. Of course the police can make efficiency savings; they should strive to do more and do better, and should make savings in procurement, on overtime and by changing the way they do things. That does mean cuts to their budgets, but by forcing cuts of 20%, with the steepest cuts occurring in the first two years so that there is no time to adjust and plan, the Government have lost any sense of balance and any grip on the reality of what such cuts will mean for communities across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has made an extremely important and valid point and an excellent contribution to the debate. It is exactly that point that was stopping the police doing the job they wanted to do.

[Claire Perry]

Does my right hon. Friend share my incredulity on listening to those on the Opposition Benches? One would think that there had been nothing left to do in terms of improving efficiency, but is the Home Secretary aware that each of the 43 police forces buys its own uniform and its own cars separately?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend also makes an important and valid point. I will come on to such issues in a few minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

8. What steps she is taking to reduce the burden of paperwork on police forces.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

9. What steps she is taking to reduce the burden of paperwork on police forces.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The Government are committed to reducing bureaucracy. We are scrapping the stop-and- account form, and reducing the amount of information to be recorded on the stop-and-search form. Doing those two things saves up to 800,000 man-hours a year. We are returning certain charging decisions to the police. That will save up to a further 50,000 man-hours per year. We are working with the police to sweep away a further range of the red tape that prevents officers doing what they and the public want them to do—getting out on the streets and cutting crime.

[Claire Perry]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the past 14 months the Wiltshire police force has undergone four separate inspections by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary lasting three working weeks and costing the force £60,000, and no meaningful recommendations have been made as a result? Does she intend to reform this box-ticking regime to cut the burdens of police bureaucracy and paperwork still further?

[Mrs May]

I was not aware of the specific figures for Wiltshire. I realise that this is an issue. That is why the Policing Minister has been working with HMIC on reducing the bureaucratic burdens of the inspection regime by ensuring that we maintain an effective inspection regime, and he will inform the House on this matter in due course.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. There have been literally dozens of examples in our recent history where London has been a centre for the negotiation and conclusion of important international agreements between warring factions, and we are in danger of losing that ability because universal jurisdiction has been misused, misapplied and inappropriately applied as a means of pursuing political vendettas. All that is required for the proposed changes is the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions—it is, incidentally, already required in certain other routine prosecutions—which would enable the system to withstand attempts to exploit the law for settling political scores. I very much welcome that provision.

Other important provisions are designed to deal with the encampment on Parliament square. The Prime Minister has said that he would like to see that encampment done away with; the Bill will achieve that, although it will be some months before Royal Assent is granted. Having looked at the existing laws, I take the view that law is already available on the criminal statute book, which could be applied to remove the encampment in time for the royal wedding in April.

Members will be fascinated to know that I have in mind the Vagrancy Act 1824. As Members will obviously know, section 4(2) of the 1824 Act says:

“Every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or wagon, and not giving a good account of himself or herself… commits an offence.”

Members might be interested to know that this Act is not as obsolete as its antiquity would tend to imply. It is, in fact, a piece of legislation that is used regularly around the country. I myself have prosecuted people for this offence in relatively recent times, in my former guise as a member of the Bar.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I thought my hon. Friend was going to say that he had been moved on under the terms of the Act, so I was grateful that he finished his sentence. I am delighted that he has found a potential wrinkle to help us to clear the encampment outside this building, which I think disgraces the motherhood of democracy. Does he agree that although we all share the commitment to freedom of speech and the right to protest, this is simply an eyesore that we have tolerated for far too long? The provisions on this issue are important and should be welcomed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think that I answered that when I responded to the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). As I said, the Government are absolutely clear that there is a need to rebalance national security and civil liberties. We can enjoy our civil liberties only if we have our national security, and we are absolutely clear about the Government’s responsibility for ensuring our national security.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

3. How much she plans to allocate to development of the e-borders system in the next three years.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

The priority for the coalition remains to secure the border and to control migration. The coalition Government remain committed to the delivery of e-borders, which will help to reduce terrorism, crime and immigration abuse and to improve the productivity of border processes. At this stage, final budgets have not been agreed for e-borders.

[Claire Perry]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I am particularly pleased to hear that we have an ongoing commitment to the e-borders project, which is a necessary step in tackling the problem of illegal immigration that many people in my constituency feel was all but ignored by the previous Government. Will the Minister update us on another vital part of our strategy to combat illegal terrorism, namely the formation of the dedicated UK police and border force?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is right to point out the importance of e-borders as part of an integrated strategy to improve our border control. We have made significant progress on creating a single harmonised work force in the UK Border Agency. Some 3,000 staff have already been trained across the old disciplines of customs and immigration, and we have gone a long way towards creating a single primary line—the first line that people meet when they come into the country. On top of that, of course, we have published our consultation document, “Policing in the 21st century”, in which we announced a border police command as part of the new national crime agency. That will co-ordinate the tasking of the border enforcement operational staff who will form the new border police capability. We will make our borders much more secure with all those measures.

European Investigation Order

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Having had my statement welcomed both by the shadow Home Secretary and by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and now being described as “brave” by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), I am not sure about this.

I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with some examples of the existing arrangements working, as well as examples of the problems caused for prosecutors and police by the lack of a timetable such as the one that will be introduced by the EIO.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

The Home Secretary’s statement eloquently set out the reasons to welcome this process. However, the words “opt in” and “European directive” send shivers down many backbones in my constituency. Only today I heard from a constituent about the 256 European arrest warrants referred for mediation last year, presumably at a cost of untold millions to European taxpayers. Can the Home Secretary assure us that she and her team will scrutinise the detail of this directive to ensure that it is operationally more effective than the European arrest warrant system?

[Mrs May]

I can indeed assure my hon. Friend that we will look closely at the detail of this. The intention is to make it easier for prosecutors and police—and the defence—to obtain the evidence necessary for trials. She mentions the European arrest warrant, but as I said earlier, the EIO is entirely separate.

Policing in the 21st Century

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The statement should be entitled, “Policing in the 21st Century: How to make the job harder”. As usual, the Home Secretary trots out her infantile drivel about the last Labour Government, probably written by some pimply nerd foisted on her office by No. 10.

The Home Secretary said that she aims to undo the damage of the Labour years. That damage was recorded in the Home Office’s statistics on 15 July. Here it is: overall crime is down by 50%, violent crime is down by 50%, property crime is down by 55%, the murder rate is at its lowest level since at any time over the past 20 years, and the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest level since records began in 1981—21.5%, down from its peak of 40% under the Conservatives. That is the damage that she is seeking to undo—the kind of damage that any Government would be proud of.

The Home Secretary is about to have her budget cut by at least 25%.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Thanks to you.

[Alan Johnson]

Thanks to us, the hon. Lady says from a sedentary position. I remind her that we were making the police a priority and guaranteeing the funding for record numbers of police officers.

Last week’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the Audit Commission made it plain that any cuts above 12% were bound adversely to affect front-line policing. Soon we will learn how the Government plan to restrict the use of the DNA database and CCTV, and thus make it harder for the police to catch criminals. Today we have the final part of the triple whammy—structural upheaval through the imposition of elected commissioners and the abolition of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Perhaps the Home Secretary can tell me which chief constables, which police authority chairs or even which local authority leaders support the replacement of police authorities by a single elected commissioner. Sir Simon Milton, when he was the Conservative head of the Local Government Association, said that:

“there are already people elected at local level to represent the community and be advocates over a range of services—they’re called councillors”.

Is not the Home Secretary setting up, in Sir Simon Milton’s words,

“a parallel and potentially conflicting system with a competing mandate”?

Sir Hugh Orde has said:

“Every professional bone in my body tells me”

that having elected commissioners

“is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability and add nothing but confusion.”

The Conservative chair of the Association of Police Authorities has said that the idea appears to be driven by dogma, and Richard Kemp, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the Local Government Association, has said that the vast majority of the 3,700 Lib Dem councillors—a figure soon to be drastically reduced at the next election—oppose an elected commissioner. Does the Home Secretary not think that the narrower the remit of the position, the weaker the case for having the occupier of that position decided by ballot?

How will the Home Secretary safeguard the operational independence of the chief constable? As the APA has pointed out, police authorities have done a great deal over the past few years to ensure that the public understand their role and that police authority members are properly equipped and trained to operate effectively. There is a clear argument for enhancing and increasing the role and responsibility of local government, so that local councillors have a clear mandate for holding the police to account. That is the route that we should be taking, rather than this unnecessary, unwanted and expensive diversion. Can the Home Secretary tell me whether the LGA is right when it states that the elected commissioners will cost £50 million? What is her estimate?

The coalition agreement talked about refocusing the Serious Organised Crime Agency, not eliminating it. That organisation was formed only four years ago, and the structural upheaval then took years to settle down.