Gareth Thomas
Main Page: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)Department Debates - View all Gareth Thomas's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr McFadden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The point I am making is that the effect of this is not uniform in all parts of the country. My contention is that ensuring adequate police numbers is a progressive cause. It confers freedom on those who cannot afford to move house to get away from the problem. It provides help where it is needed most. Conversely, when it is not there, it is those who need help most who lose out.
For a time the Government claimed that there was nothing to worry about, because cuts in police numbers were not resulting in higher crime. Well, no longer. In the west midlands over the past year, violence against the person was up 21%, sexual offences up 23%, robbery up 22%, possession of weapon offences up 17% and knife crime up 18%. Nationally, homicides were up 14%, robbery up 22% and knife crime up 12%. The toll of knife crime, in particular, has horrified the country. Night after night, we hear of young lives brutally and senselessly cut short. Just last week, in the midst of a horrendous series of stabbings in our capital city of London, the Evening Standard pictured two of the victims on its front page. They were aged just 15 and 17. These were the faces of boys, not men; children killed in the most awful way. This has happened far too often on our streets. I am sure that all of us—on whichever side of the House—would agree that combating the upsurge in knife crime is a national cause of the utmost urgency.
The Minister may say that policing is not the sole answer, and I accept that. Clearly, there needs to be a further expansion of schemes, such as the early youth intervention scheme, that seek to tackle the root causes. Money for that scheme was distributed earlier this week, including some to my force in the west midlands, and I welcome that. However, if policing is not the sole answer, it is certainly an essential part of it, and we are going to need adequate numbers of police officers to get on top of this national emergency.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend is making an extremely effective speech. He referenced, in particular, the upsurge in knife crime in London. Is he aware that Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has written to the Prime Minister setting out that the extra pension costs, which my right hon. Friend has rightly sought to draw to the House’s attention, represent £130 million extra a year, which is equivalent potentially to the loss of 2,000 police officers?
Mr McFadden
Those are shocking numbers, both financially and in the potential impact on police numbers. As I said, it is simply intolerable to expect the public to cope with the consequences if they unfold in that way.
It is in those twin contexts—falling police numbers and rising violent crime, including a particular emergency relating to knife crime—that we must consider police resources. The origin of the changes to the pension scheme, which could affect these numbers further, are two changes in what is called the discount rate for calculating pension liabilities. The effect of the changes in the discount rate has been to increase the liabilities for employers—in other words, to increase their costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) just quoted the potential impact on London. According to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the changes to pension costs across the country could mean that they have to find another £165 million next year, rising to £417 million the year after. By way of comparison, that is the same amount as the total budget for West Yorkshire police, which is the fourth biggest police force in England.
Gareth Thomas
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, and he has talked about the attitude of his constituents in north-east London. Those concerns are shared in north-west London. I have lived in my constituency all my life, and I cannot remember a time before now when there was gun crime on the streets of Harrow. In the past 12 months, we have found ourselves in the unprecedented situation of having two significant incidents of gun crime. That is unparalleled.
Wes Streeting
I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I say without any prejudice towards inner London that, in reality, inner London has always had to grapple with violent crime. For MPs in boroughs such as Lambeth and Lewisham, gun crime, knife crime and gang crime have always been part and parcel of their work as constituency MPs. We know that there are problems concentrated in inner cities. That is an unfortunate fact of life, and it is one that we are working really hard to try to tackle. Frankly, no one should have to tolerate violent crime, wherever they live. My hon. Friend has just mentioned suburban London. My constituency borders the county of Essex, and I did not expect to see these levels of knife crime and violent crime there when I was elected to this place three years ago.
At Prime Minister’s questions today, I referred to an awful incident, which I would actually not associate with the police cuts, but I would draw to the Minister’s attention the stabbings and the gang crime in my constituency, as well as the county lines activity. Young people are being actively groomed at school gates. They are being identified because of their vulnerability and because they are the kids that are falling behind at school, and they are being groomed to run drugs across the country. We need police on our streets to deal with this. It is not just about grabbing people and nicking them; it is about the intelligence that community policing provides. It is about intelligence gathering and relationship building. It is about building trust so that people will come forward and speak to the police. All that is put at risk by the impact of the cuts to police budgets and police numbers. Given that that is the overall context, it is totally unacceptable to throw on top of that these changes to employer pension contributions, which are adding to the budgetary pressures.
To his credit, the Mayor of London has tried, with the resources he has available, to stem the tide of police cuts. Sadiq Khan has put in £140 million to fund 1,000 police officers, who would otherwise not be there. That has come at the cost of diverting into the policing budget money that the Greater London Authority gathers through business rates. It has also come at a cost to my constituents and to residents right across our capital city, who are paying more through their precept for policing.
It is so difficult to have a conversation about this with voters on the doorstep—this applies to council tax generally, by the way. I knock on people’s doors, and they say really clearly, “Hang on a minute. How is it that my local services are getting worse and there are fewer police officers on the street? My precept is going up—I am paying more. Why aren’t we getting more police?” That is a perfectly reasonable question. I have to explain to my constituents something I think is unjustifiable, which is that the Mayor of London is having to put up their precept because he is doing his best to stem the tide of cuts from central Government. This is a repeat pattern of behaviour: central Government make decisions here and pass the buck to local decision makers, who are responsible for implementing the cuts.
Rachael Maskell
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Policing is not just about the police service; it is about the wider partnerships that are formed.
Let me return to the point I was making—
Rachael Maskell
I will just make a little progress, then I will be happy to give way.
The problem raised by the police and crime commissioner is that there is no certainty in the future, beyond 2019-20, about the impact of the cuts to pension contributions, so it is really important that we have clarity from the Minister about the future of the police force, not only in the short term but in the long term.
Gareth Thomas
My hon. Friend is making a good speech about her area. Does she agree that the Minister and his Home Office colleagues will have an early opportunity to put right the debacle that has motivated my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) to secure this debate? The report on the police grant has to come before the House soon; perhaps my hon. Friend might like to encourage the Minister to intervene on her, perhaps at 5 o’clock, to set out a specific guarantee that the Government are going to fill the gap identified by my right hon. Friend?
Rachael Maskell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Minister has a real opportunity to alleviate the fears of police and crime commissioners and those with responsibility for policing up and down the country, and to address the real shortfall they are facing in their budgets. I would of course welcome any intervention from the Minister in which he did that, because there is clearly a lot of concern throughout the country, not only for our constituents’ security but for the services themselves.
Mr Deputy Speaker
We started off with the midlands; let’s go with the midlands again and then we will come back to London. I call Jack Dromey.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to participate in this debate on the increase in employers’ pension contributions that is expected of the police. I want to reference in particular the situation in London. If the House will forgive me, I will be largely parochial in my comments.
The context for my comments is the potential demand facing London for £130 million to meet the gap resulting from how the Government have decided employer pension contributions should be calculated. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has identified that the change will potentially cost the Met police £130 million, which is equivalent to some 2,000 police officer positions. As my hon. Friend rightly set out, that comes in the context of some 3,000 police officers having already been lost from London since 2010.
In my London Borough of Harrow, we have seen just shy of 200 police officer positions lost since 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) effectively challenged the Minister for Policing to go to the estates in his community and hear the concerns about rising crime. The Minister has already been to many of the estates and roads in my constituency and already heard many of the concerns, because every general election he is to be found knocking on doors in Harrow West. He is ostensibly campaigning for the Conservative opponent to the sitting Labour and Co-operative Member for Harrow West, but perhaps he is quietly canvassing for me—I do not know. He is assiduous in ostensibly trying to help every Conservative candidate, and as a result will have consistently heard the concerns about policing in Harrow.
The Minister will know, for example, of the rise in violent crime. That is noticeable in particular over the past 12 months in Rayners Lane and the Grange Farm estate, where we have seen guns used in incidents of violent crime. That is an unprecedented situation in my time living in the borough. Many of my constituents are well aware of the prevalence of drugs being consumed and traded in South Harrow and along the Northolt Road. They are also aware of that in the Harrow part of the Racecourse estate. They are concerned about incidents of antisocial behaviour, particularly aggressive drinking, in Wealdstone and South Harrow. They ask where the police are in dealing with that.
What has happened in recent years has been the slow reduction in police numbers. If the Minister for Policing and his boss the Home Secretary again fail to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer in advance of the police grant report to make good the £400 million-odd that is required nationally to stop further cuts to policing due to the increase in police employer contributions, the concern is that there will be further cuts to policing in Harrow, and that is profoundly worrying. As a result of the merger of police borough command units that Sadiq Khan has had to make happen, Harrow—a still comparatively low-crime borough in comparison to its neighbours—Barnet and Brent have been merged. We face the very real prospect of the police officers assigned to the three boroughs increasingly being used to fight crime in Barnet and Brent and more police being diverted out of Harrow for that purpose.
The concerns of my constituents have been exacerbated by the fact that the response teams for the new borough command unit will be based not at Harrow police station, but in the police stations in Colindale and Wembley. That will, inevitably, increase the response time for violent incidents in Harrow. Let us bear in mind the fact that the custody suite at Harrow police station has been earmarked for closure for some time, so those who are arrested in Harrow will be taken primarily to Colindale, but potentially also to Wembley. That will increase the amount of time for which police officers are outside our borough and unavailable to respond to crime.
Like, I suspect, many other Members of the House, I took time out over the summer to go on patrol with the police. It was striking to me just how thin the thin blue line is in Harrow. Officers who are required to be part of response teams also have to deal with ongoing police matters. Because of the small size of the response teams, it takes longer and longer to gather evidence and deal with incidents of crime. Unsurprisingly, the number of people who are taken to court and convicted of crimes is substantially down. If the money cannot be found to make good the increase in the shortfall in employers’ pension contributions, the situation will get worse.
I am struck by the rise in gang tensions in outer London. When I was first elected as a Member of Parliament, gang tensions—to the extent that they existed—were a feature of inner London, but they have now become a feature of outer London. There have been many good initiatives, and I take the opportunity to praise in passing the Ignite Trust, a superb charity that operates in my constituency, for its efforts to resolve some of the tensions between a gang based in my constituency and another based in the neighbouring borough of Ealing. Despite such work, without the support of a more visible police presence, I suspect that we will continue to face difficulties with rising gang crime.
Other hon. Members have raised the significant impact on neighbourhood policing of the loss of police numbers. I remember when the last Labour Government introduced neighbourhood policing, and what a difference it made in the south Harrow part of my constituency. At one high school, unsavoury characters used to collect outside the school gates. When police from the ward-based neighbourhood policing team were deployed outside the school gates for half an hour, those unsavoury characters instantly disappeared, and any who did show their face could be pursued. The neighbourhood police were able to provide an immediate and effective response. The visibility of PCSOs and police officers substantially reduced the fear of crime in my constituency and across London. It is profoundly concerning that the Government have not grasped the scale of the fear of crime in inner and outer London.
Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
My hon. Friend talks about the effectiveness of neighbourhood policing and PCSOs. Does he agree that they are the eyes and ears of the police? The reason for the rising crime rate under this Tory Government is the removal of neighbourhood policing, which gathers intelligence for the whole police service.
Gareth Thomas
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Whether in the north of England or in our great capital city, it has been a false choice to allow the funding cuts to the police that have led to the reduction in neighbourhood policing. Unsurprisingly, there has been a reduction in the number of people convicted for committing crime as a result. There are not the police officers to access the necessary intelligence to find those who are guilty of offences or to process them through the courts. I hope it will not be long before the Minister comes to Harrow West again. I am willing to take him on a tour of the hotspots of crime in Harrow to help him better understand his responsibilities, not just to my constituents and the constituents of London, but to all the people of this great country who deserve far better than they are getting from this Government in terms of funding to fight crime.
I end by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) for securing this debate. I hope that at the conclusion of this debate, and if not today then perhaps at the police grant report or at Prime Minister’s questions next week, we hear an announcement that there will not be a requirement on police forces to find an extra contribution to pension funds and that we will not see the substantial reduction in police numbers many of us fear will happen if the Government go ahead with this measure.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
I am delighted to provide an update and to say how much I have enjoyed this important debate, although it is slightly longer than I anticipated when I woke up this morning.
I am authorised to give an update to the House in response to the many points of order raised by Members on the clear sensitivity around due process in relation to the hugely important issue of any Brexit deal. I am authorised to inform the House that there will be no press statement this evening. There was considerable concern in the House about that happening before the Prime Minister came to Parliament. I can also confirm to the House that the Cabinet meeting is still ongoing. I am sure the House will therefore appreciate that the Prime Minister is not in a position to come to the House. I hope that gives some reassurance to Members who are concerned about due courtesy and respect being shown to Parliament.
I will now respond to the substantive issue raised in the debate. I thank the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) for securing this long debate, which has had many contributions. In doing so, he has done me a favour by sending another signal to the Treasury about the importance of resolving this issue. I do not want to sound facetious, because we are talking about an extremely important issue that affects one of the most important public services in the country and a service, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) rightly said, that is the envy of most countries around the world. Let me be clear, not least to my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), that I am extremely aware, not least as a constituency MP, of the public’s rising anxiety about crime and the police. The Government absolutely understand that this is a system under pressure. I will come on to say more about that, but let me try to address the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East and, with his permission, some of the issues raised by other Members who contributed to the debate.
It may surprise the right hon. Gentleman to hear that he and I are in agreement. Neither he, nor I, nor the Home Secretary wants to see any further reduction in police numbers. The right hon. Gentleman will know, because I am sure that he will have done his research, that police officer numbers have been stable over the past year. However, let me make it clear to him, as I have to police audiences, that one of the priorities for the Home Secretary and me is to increase the capacity of the police, because we have to increase their capacity to help them to respond to demand, which has risen and become increasingly complex. Therefore, without getting too technocratic, resource-weighted demand is the concern. They are getting drawn into more complex activity, which requires more time, more resource and longer, more complex investigations.
Underlying this—we have seen this shift since around 2014-15—are three elements. One is definitely the very unwelcome increase in certain categories of crime, and of course, the most alarming and most unacceptable is the violent crime—the knife crime—that the right hon. Gentleman rightly emphasised. Whatever the politics, I sense that there is absolutely cross-party support in the House to bear down on this, which is arguably one of the biggest challenges that we face as a society, given the complexity of the issues. We are definitely seeing some increase in crime—that is genuine and very unwelcome.
We are also seeing—I hope that the House sees this as something we can welcome—an increasing demand as a result of the police becoming much better at recording crime. We have to remember that it is not that long ago—2014—that the independent Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary was telling us that in its estimation the police were failing to record one in five crimes registered with them. That is absolutely unacceptable, and to the great credit of the police, they have responded to that criticism, but that generates additional demand.
I hope that the House would also welcome the third dimension of this increased demand, as made clear by the Office for National Statistics, which is an increased willingness of victims of so-called hidden crime to come forward to the police. I think that this represents very welcome, significant progress in society. If the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and modern slavery feel increasingly confident about coming forward to the police, that is a sign of progress in the messages we send about the seriousness that we attach to investigating those crimes. I am prepared, as I hope that others are—whatever our politics—to show some respect to the current Prime Minister and previous Home Secretary for her leadership on this issue, including not least on modern slavery. This combination of factors has undeniably increased demand on the police, and the complexity of that demand makes their task even more difficult.
Gareth Thomas
Does the Minister accept, though, that those who see gang-related violence will not be encouraged to come forward and report what they have seen if they do not see the police securing convictions? I am worried that that is beginning to happen in my constituency.
Mr Hurd
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern because I recognise the underlying concern, which has been expressed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and the Mayor, about encouraging people to come forward. There are issues around trust and confidence. That requires a robust police system to be there for people. We are increasingly seeing that in London, but we are also all aware of some of the underlying challenges with regard to trust in the police in certain communities, on which, to their great credit, the Metropolitan police have done a lot of work over many years to try to improve. This is not straightforward, but it is a real issue.
When I said that our priority is to increase the capacity of the police, that was not just rhetoric. Last year, as part of the police funding settlement, I stood at this Dispatch Box and took the first step on that journey—a step welcomed by David Thompson in the west midlands. It was not enough in his opinion, but he saw it for what it was: a first step in the right direction towards increasing the capacity of our police system with a police and funding settlement that has resulted in an additional £460 million of public money in our police system.
I also signalled last year our intention to do something similar for 2019-20, subject to the police meeting certain conditions on efficiency and productivity, again sending a signal of our intention to support investment in, not cuts to, policing. As a result, almost every police force in the country is recruiting additional officers. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) talked about the Met. As a fellow London MP, I share his concern, but I am sure he will also welcome the steps taken to recruit extra officers to the Met. I believe that 700 have been recruited through a combination of what was enabled under the funding settlement and the actions of the Mayor himself. As London MPs, we should recognise that the Met is recruiting additional officers at scale.
Alongside the funding settlement and the support for local forces is the additional investment that continues to be made from the centre, through the police transformation fund, in working with police to build their national capabilities. We know the importance of building those capabilities in a fragmented system. More money has gone in to uplift armed officer capability, to support the increasing number of detectives and to support important new facets of policing, such as the first national wellbeing programme for frontline officers, which I hope the Labour party will support, and the investment in helping the police to build something that is critical for their future: their digital capability. There is, then, additional investment in policing.
There are challenges though. I find myself in full agreement again with Labour MPs over the importance of neighbourhood policing, which has come under considerable pressure in recent years, as the independent inspectorate made clear. There has been an inconsistent picture in neighbourhood policing across the country. I hope the Labour party will support what the police are doing now to agree new guidelines on what represents best practice in neighbourhood policing. The majority of forces are now adopting that best practice, meaning we will be developing a much more consistent model of neighbourhood policing.
With that comes a growing emphasis on crime prevention. I agree absolutely with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East. We cannot afford a police force that is reactive, but the police are increasingly concerned about becoming reactive. We all surely understand the importance of crime prevention. It is always smarter to invest in the fence at the top of the cliff than in the ambulance at the bottom. With that additional capacity and rebuilding of the neighbourhood policing model, I hope and expect to see a reassertion of traditional police strengths in problem solving.
I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about knife crime. Of course, there is a need for a robust policing pillar for that. It needs to be a combination of robust policing and prevention work to tackle the root causes. He understands, as does everyone, all the lessons from places that have beaten down on this problem in the past. It is that combination that is important and which I see being put in place through the serious violence strategy. I thank him also for recognising the importance of the additional funding for counter-terrorism policing in the Budget. We all understand the importance of that, and I am delighted to hear that the Labour party supports it.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) is no longer in her place—[Interruption.] I am so sorry. She has moved, which is really unhelpful for Ministers at the Dispatch Box—[Laughter.]—but I am delighted she is still here. She rightly raised the very important issue of mental health. All MPs engaged closely with their forces will know the growing frustration and unease among our police offices at how long they spend supporting people with mental health issues in their communities, so I hope the Labour party will welcome the additional investment in mental health locally. I am clear in my mind that one of the dividends from that additional investment must be a reduction in demand on the police, and I have made that point directly to the Secretary of State for Health.
The point I am labouring is that, although there is a lot of talk about cuts, in fact the Government have recognised that the demands on policing have changed, and, bearing in mind the limited resources and our concern for how much tax our constituents are able and prepared to pay, we have taken steps to increase investment in policing. With the £460 million, we are investing £1 billion more in our police system than we were three years ago.
Gareth Thomas
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would not normally intervene on a speech by a Minister replying to a debate, but I am seeing on social media that, despite the Minister saying there will be no statement about the Cabinet’s discussions on Brexit, there is now due to be a statement by the Prime Minister to the press afterwards. I wonder if there is any way in which we can clarify the situation.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
That is not a matter for me, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. I am sure if somebody wishes to come forward, they can do so, but the Minister did give a very honest, open statement. I have no more to add other than what has been said. I suggest that the Minister continues with the debate unless he has an answer to the question.