Police Federation Reform (Normington Report)

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

As ever, you flatter me too much, Mr Speaker.

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Independent Review of the Police Federation conducted by Sir David Normington and calls upon the Government to take action to implement the report’s recommendations and to reform the Police Federation.

I spent a large proportion of the last decade defending the police one way or another, yet I have never experienced a time when public trust in the police was at a lower level. In my view that is a tragedy, both for the vast majority of decent officers who joined up to catch criminals and protect the public, but also for the wider public. We must deal firmly with those who bring the police into disrepute if we are to restore the reputation that most policemen properly deserve.

There was a similar crisis of confidence as far back as 1918-19 after the police strikes of those years, the first of which was called during wartime and caused a similar low perception of the standing of the police. That strike was ended after one day. The police were granted a considerable pay increase, but as a result, as a vital service they were forbidden both membership of a trade union and the right to strike. The Government effectively established the Police Federation in place of a union, to represent the concerns of police officers around the country. They gave it a statutory closed shop, which lasts to this day.

There is no doubt that the Police Federation had a noble beginning, and for many years it was a constructive force behind British policing, raising the reputation of the British copper to the position it ought to hold. Regrettably, the federation today is a bloated and sclerotic body, and has acquired the worst characteristics of the worst trade unions that we thought—and hoped—we had seen the end of in the ’70s.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Police representation crosses boundaries. This is a matter for the police rank and file on the ground, whose confidence has been shaken, and for the public; and it is a matter for hon. Members on both sides of the House and should be beyond party politics. The federation has unfortunately engaged in party politics and has politicised itself by its actions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that hon. Members on both sides of the House need to express our concerns, and that it is therefore disappointing that there are Members in number on only one side of the House to engage in the debate?

[Mr Davis]

I accept one aspect of what my hon. Friend says. He has had cases relating to the misbehaviour of police officers in his constituency and has done a great deal to defend them, sometimes but not always with the help of the federation. [Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) wants to speak from the Opposition Front Bench, I will happily take his intervention. The breadth of the appeal of the debate is an issue, but I do not want to make this party political. There are now two Members on the Opposition Back Benches and they have strong views—the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has tabled a motion jointly with me in the past, and the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I would not make this a party political issue. Members on both sides of the House have something to gain from the police being truly apolitical and truly upholding our democracy rather than interfering in it in the wrong way.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that leadership comes from the top, and that the Association of Chief Police Officers has not led from the top? Many of the criticisms in the excellent report could also be made of ACPO.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend has a point. I do not want to broaden the debate to include all police issues, but he is right. ACPO is badly constituted and should never have been set up in the way that it was. There are signs that ACPO should have done more to lead firmly. We saw that in the west midlands cases, where the various chief constables were perhaps not as strong in upholding justice as they should have been.

That brings me to the federation itself. I am talking primarily about the national federation, but also about some of the regions. I say that because some of the local federation organisations do a very good job on very thin resources to represent, as they properly should, the interests of their members.

Nevertheless, there are many criticisms to level at the federation, including that it is inefficient and wasteful. There is a duplication of tasks and structures. It is profligate, spending its members’ money on grace and favour flats and on huge bar bills. It is badly governed, with no apparent strong leadership to guarantee direction and stability. It behaves in a manner that sometimes brings police forces into disrepute by pursuing personal and political vendettas—the sort of things to which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) has referred—against prominent public persons and bodies, and legal actions against private citizens, sometimes even the victims of crime.

After the Police Federation’s attack on my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the view of the public, and damningly of the federation’s members, was that the federation had to change.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Given my right hon. Friend’s reference to our right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), will he comment on today’s front page of The Times, which I am sure he has seen?

[Mr Davis]

I do not want to widen the debate and have a rerun of the Mitchell case, but I should say a couple of things about it. The House knows full well that I did not approve of the Leveson process—I strongly believe in a free press—but even I am astonished that, after Leveson, a police force has yet again leaked with an incredible spin a confidential document to which the victim in the case, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield, has not had access. First, I expect the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to have a proper leak inquiry into that—I have told him that this morning. Secondly, an astonishing interpretation was put on the leak. The leak shows that an officer, four hours after attempting to stop my right hon. Friend going through the main gates of Downing street—this did not happen in a panic or a rush and was premeditated—wrote to his seniors not to say, “We have a security issue. Will somebody please have a conversation with Mr Mitchell to ensure he understands that we cannot let him through?”, which would have been the proper thing to do and what hon. Members would have done, but to set up a circumstance in which the situation would be resolved by a public confrontation at the front gate after the officer had ensured that his seniors supported him in doing so. If anything, that reinforces the story we were told by an anonymous whistleblower that this was a premeditated action. Today’s press coverage is not a good reflection on the police in two ways: it undermines their main case and it is something that they simply should not have done under these circumstances.

If the House will forgive me, I will try not to rest too much on the Mitchell case, because it is just one of many in which we have reason to be concerned about the role of the federation.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right. Does he agree, as the Normington report sets out very clearly, that the Mitchell case is just one illustration of the, frankly, flagrant and endemic bullying and harassment that often goes on among the federation’s own members, whether online or in person? That is set out very clearly in the report.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend—he is also an old friend—is entirely right. I will elaborate in some detail on some of those cases in a moment.

The federation chose a very good person to write the report. David Normington, a distinguished ex-permanent secretary at the Home Office, is a classic Whitehall mandarin. If anything, he is more tempted than most to be careful and sober in his language, and to pull his punches in his descriptions or at least to mitigate them. However, it is in the best interests of police officers across the country that we reveal very clearly, and perhaps in starker detail than Normington did, the extent to which the federation has failed.

Even in its sober language, the Normington report was, as my hon. Friend intimates, utterly damning of the federation’s performance. It made 36 recommendations, focusing on returning professionalism, democracy and efficiency to the Police Federation. To fully understand the extent of the problem, we should examine a number of areas where the need for reform is particularly apparent.

It is a matter of great concern that the Police Federation is as profligate as it appears to be. There are numerous examples of that. It spent £26 million building its Leatherhead headquarters. Frankly, that is extravagant enough to do justice to one of the London merchant banks at the height of the City excesses. The headquarters have a hotel, a bar, an indoor swimming pool and 11 grace and favour apartments. Even more outrageous is that, to pay for the extravagant cost, members’ subscription fees had to be raised by 23%. The federation’s officers, with their salaries still paid by their respective forces, receive salary enhancements of up to £25,000 from the federation. They are given those enhancements for doing what is, after all, an easier job than being on the cold streets of Britain on the night shift: sitting in their luxury headquarters, instead of performing public duties. I have been told that full-time federation officers have free use of the grace and favour flats and live on company credit cards. The purchase of large quantities of food and alcohol on those cards is apparently not uncommon.

To put a number on this, the accounts show a provision of £2 million in a tax dispute with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. As I understand it, if that provision is to meet any tax liability, at a tax rate of 40%, that means that £5 million of claims have been made on perks, and perhaps unjustifiably claimed as a proper expense. That is astonishing.

In the newspapers only a couple of days ago a police widow—herself a serving police constable, if the report was right—said that federation officials treated memorial services, those most important and high-gravitas of occasions,

“like a drunken jolly, getting drunk on federation credit cards. Their drunken excess upsets families every year”,

so this is not an exception. I heard similar allegations about the behaviour of federation officials at conferences, at which bar bills of hundreds of pounds were again being charged to federation credit cards.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the money might be better spent restoring the damaged national police memorial, on the Mall, which remains broken and damaged, and that that would be a fitting tribute to the brave and dedicated police officers who form the majority?

[Mr Davis]

That is an extremely imaginative suggestion. I have my own ideas about what should happen with the money, but my hon. Friend’s idea should be taken into account.

In making these assertions, I have largely depended on whistleblowers—people who have bravely come forward, shocked at what they have seen—but police whistleblowers are particularly at risk and so are loth to enter the public domain, which makes it hard to check what they have said. As a result, I called on the federation to publish its expense accounts and live up to generally expected standards of transparency. I did this so that I could confirm or deny whether these claims were correct. As far as I am aware, the federation has not published these expense and credit card accounts, which leads me to believe that the whistleblowers are right.

It is up to the federation’s members to say whether they consider this profligacy acceptable, because mostly—but not entirely—it is their money, but they cannot make that judgment unless they know exactly what is being done in their name with their money. So that is another reason to have total transparency in these accounts. Yet another reason concerns my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who as Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims represents the Home Office on the Front Bench today. We put taxpayers’ money into the federation—it is there properly to perform a function we want performed—so it might be the case that taxpayers’ money is being wasted at these conferences.

The federation appears to have a problem with transparency. It is telling that it failed to answer even Sir David Normington’s requests concerning the so-called No. 2 accounts used by the various branches. This money comes from selling insurance and then keeping a rake-off or commission, but so far the federation has not been willing or able to provide the information that Normington asked for. I understand that this probably accounts for £35 million of assets just sitting around the country. Again, this is money that belongs to serving police officers, not the organisation.

Contrary to the federation’s claims earlier this week, the full details of the 11 grace and favour apartments are not published in its accounts. I will not spend much time on this, but, to save colleagues time looking it up, I recommend they read note 3 of the federation’s accounts. It is the only reference to the apartments, but it does not contain what I would recognise as details telling us that these are grace and favour apartments used for the benefit of federation officers, with or without the approval of its members. It is clear that the federation does not know what transparency means, but it can only restore trust in itself if it imposes transparency on all its operations as a matter of urgency.

The federation’s use of funds raises another matter. It has formidable financial muscle. I guess its total assets come to about £70 million, the majority coming from subscription fees, but some from the No. 2 accounts. The last set of audited accounts showed the federation with a surplus, over and above all its costs and profligacy, of £3.5 million per annum.

In addition, we see in the costs that about £10 million was spent on administration, including the profligacies that I talked about. Most astonishingly, £8 million every single year was spent on legal actions. Furthermore, there are provisions against the loss of certain active legal cases—in one case, for up to £1 million. Other such provisions are for £350,000 or £450,000.

Let us understand something. The right hon. Member for Tottenham is here and will well understand that sometimes there are good reasons for the federation to act vigorously on behalf of its members. Big legal and individual interests will be in play in the Duggan case, and in such cases it is entirely proper that provisions should be made. I do not in any way criticise that element of legal defence, although I have to say that it should come about through an insurance function rather than through the discretion of a Fed rep. Never mind.

Such legal action is justifiable, but on many occasions aggressive litigation should not be carried out against those bringing complaints against the police. Chris Mullin, the distinguished predecessor of the Home Affairs Committee Chairman, has previously said that although most unions will not act on behalf of a member who is clearly in the wrong, the federation has a long track record of defending the indefensible and will gleefully launch claims against the victims of crime.

There are two recent examples of the federation’s appetite for litigation. PC Kelly Jones sued a burglary victim after she tripped on a kerb outside his garage and PC Richard Seymour sued another burglary victim after falling over a drain on his property. In both instances, it was the Police Federation that assisted in progressing the claims, despite the pleading of senior officers that such claims were detrimental to the image of the police force. This is based on press reportage, so I cannot be sure of it, but the federation has been accused of pressuring PC Kelly Jones into making her claim when she had no desire to do so. I hear from other whistleblowers that it is not uncommon for federation members to be actively encouraged to make claims that Members might find inappropriate. A particular concern—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I gently remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Backbench Business Committee recommends that the opening speech should last for 10 to 15 minutes. He has now been speaking for 20 minutes. Ten Members wish to participate, and there is another debate this afternoon. We are all hanging on the right hon. Gentleman’s every word, but he should bear it in mind that other people are involved. I would be grateful if he concluded soon.

[Mr Davis]

Absolutely, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been generous with interventions—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that that does not count; the 10 to 15 minutes are not qualified in any way. The right hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way, but other Members will want a reasonable time to participate.

[Mr Davis]

I will be as brisk as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I come to the most serious point of the debate: the bringing of defamation cases against people who disagree with the police’s version of events. There is no downside for a police officer when they pursue a libel action backed by the enormous resources of the Fed. That raises two distinct and concerning issues. First, action against the press, who must hold the police to account, is utterly against the interests of a fair and free society except in very clear-cut circumstances. Secondly, there is the action taken against members of the public, whom the police are charged with protecting, who disagree with the police’s version of events. That insulates the police from criticism and from being held to account for what they do. Such actions should not take place. If the federation is using its financial might to crush legitimate claims against officers or—worse—to pursue those who have already been subject to a police stitch-up, to take an extreme example, that huge injustice would compound existing injustices.

My next point is about the Normington report on politically motivated campaigns. It said:

“Throughout our inquiry we have heard allegations that some Federation representatives who have personally targeted successive Home Secretaries, Andrew Mitchell, Tom Winsor and others, bringing the Federation into disrepute and risking the police reputation for impartiality and integrity…If the Federation wants to be respected and listened to in the future, this has to stop.”

Such actions are completely unacceptable and contrary to the purpose of the Police Federation.

Finally, I turn to what should be done. As we consider whether progress and reform should be left to the federation, we should bear two simple points in mind. Are the interests of its officers, who have something to lose—a cushy job and good pay—or are the interests of the members being pursued? It is vital that the members themselves should be properly represented.

Last week, Fiona McElroy, a former principal private secretary brought in to help the federation achieve the reforms, was fired; her deputy also left the federation in outrage at her treatment. I ask the Minister to give the federation two ultimatums. First, it should immediately sign up to recommendation 1 and accept the revised core purpose to act in the public interest, with public accountability alongside accountability to their own members. Secondly, it should accept all the other Normington recommendations before its triennial elections this year, when it will lock in place a whole set of officers for another three years. If it does not do that, the Government will, I think, be properly authorised to intervene. In my view, if they do intervene, they should implement Normington-plus—put in place all the Normington proposals and in addition act to deal with the profligacy and misuse of public and members’ money.

Such a move, I am afraid, would mean selling the Leatherhead headquarters, centralising the money and giving back to members the funds that the federation has inappropriately used in the past several years. That would be about £500 a member and would still leave a viable federation. That is how we can make the Police Federation serve its members and, equally importantly, serve the public of the nation that its members are there to uphold.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—