Police and Crime Commissioners

Jeremy Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

It is a pleasure for all hon. Members to see you safely back in our parliamentary bosom, Ms Dorries.

As always, I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), whom for the purposes of this debate I call my hon. Friend, on his sterling and sustained work on early intervention. To summarise what I am going to say in the next 10 to 12 minutes, I agree with him. He is right to give this issue his attention. The evidence is compelling. There are some encouraging long-term crime trends in Britain and other countries in the western world, but those will only be sustained by having a long-term analysis of and understanding about what causes crime, and with solutions to those causes that drive down the figures in future.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned police and crime commissioners. People abbreviate that, calling them police commissioners, and in doing so risk overlooking an important component of the commissioners’ work, which is the “and crime” dimension. They are not just the chairman of the local police force, organising its budgets and recruitment practices. They are also there to take a view about how to reduce crime in the area that they are responsible for, which may mean short-term interventions with immediate crime problems—I hope that they will do that—and about having a broader, longer-term view about the causes of crime and what they can do to bring about positive changes.

I will talk a little bit about police and crime commissioners, but first let me illustrate why early intervention is so important and then talk briefly about some measures that we are already putting place, which could work either with the commissioners or standing on their own, but are nevertheless important in terms of the broader issue that the hon. Gentleman brings to our attention.

On the benefits of early intervention, I want to bring two brief studies to the attention of the House. One was an American study that found that children growing up in violent households had a seven times higher chance of developing alcohol problems than children who did not suffer such adverse experiences at home in their formative years; the chance of developing illicit drug use problems was four and a half times higher, and the chance of committing violence was nearly nine times higher. There are causal links, and the likelihood of children whose first few years are the most difficult having such problems is not just 5% or 10% greater, but hundreds per cent. greater. The second study was done in the United Kingdom, and it showed that children who were identified as being at risk at the age of three had two and a half times more criminal convictions by the time they turned 21 than those not so identified.

The value of what the hon. Gentleman has brought to our attention is obvious, and the benefits are felt sooner than some people might realise in some contexts, such as truanting from school and petty—entry-level, if you like—criminality among relatively young children. We are not necessarily talking about a 20 or even 15-year time lag; there might be a much shorter time lag before the benefits of today’s early intervention can be seen.

The Government have introduced several measures that we hope will have a beneficial impact. We are spending —if the different funds are aggregated—£2.3 billion this year, £2.4 billion next year and £2.5 billion the year after on the early intervention grant. I should not anticipate the autumn statement, which will happen in just over an hour, but I suspect that not every Government budget will receive such year-on-year increases. However, we are keen to sustain funding for the early intervention grant. The Government are also extending entitlement to free early education to two-year-olds from next year, so that more children will be given opportunities at that formative stage. A separate sum of £448 million has been allocated for the troubled families programme, to ensure that we have the right multi-agency hands-on approach for the 120,000 families around the country who have been identified as in the greatest difficulty. I know from first-hand experience, because I have sat in on the meetings, that the Prime Minister takes a direct interest in that initiative, and that it has the support of many Departments. It is hugely important for the life opportunities and prospects of the children of those families that it should succeed; and it is also important in relation to the issue that we are debating—the impact on crime in the future.

The family nurse partnership programme is a scheme to help, particularly, vulnerable teenage mothers who perhaps do not have the support network that they need in their family or community to give their children the best start in life. We are expanding that, and thousands of young women will experience the benefits of the programme in the next three years. That is intended to ensure that children have the right early upbringing—that they are raised well and have the right diet—to stand them in good stead.

There are other schemes being run in different Departments. We hope that many of the changes in the Department for Education will be beneficial for attendance rates and ways of dealing with children who have behavioural problems, and will improve performance and exam attainment. There is a quite close correlation between success at school and likely propensity to criminality either while the child should be at school or later. The link is not an absolute one: some high-achieving children go on to be criminal, and some low-achieving ones do not; but there is a correlation. On the employment side, there is also a link between worklessness and a propensity to a life of criminality, and we are trying to do more to help young people to get apprenticeships, for example. The Government funded 360,000 apprenticeships last year, and have also spent £30 million on the innovation fund, which supports about 17,000 of the most vulnerable young people over a three-year period. I have mentioned those things because I would not want the House to form the impression that the area in question is receiving no attention. Senior and Cabinet-level Ministers, including in the Home Office—the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is another good example—are trying to do more about the problems that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

The hon. Gentleman discussed police and crime commissioners and I want to spend the last few minutes of my speech on that subject. Their purpose is to give the work of the police greater public accountability, but also to give a sense of leadership, in public communications terms, to policing in each community. I hope that they will become important figureheads and help to give impetus to improvements in their police forces, but also drive a public debate within communities about what can be done to tackle the sorts of crime that MPs hear about every day—lower-level crime, vandalism, antisocial behaviour, late-night noise and graffiti. I hope that they will be interested in all those issues, as well as in more serious crimes such as domestic violence and burglary.

I hope that the commissioners will see—and this is the purpose of the debate—the wider benefits of working with other agencies besides the police. The police in my constituency of Taunton Deane are very responsive in working with schools, voluntary community groups, neighbourhood watch schemes, churches, cadets and scout groups. All those groups can play an important role. Local businesses are also often willing to support initiatives that reduce local crime and help with early intervention. I hope that PCCs will be imaginative about their use of budgets and time, so that as well as working with the police they can encourage the police and others to work together for the benefit of the community.

The hon. Gentleman raised two specific points—two “asks”, I think he said. The first one was easy, when he was good enough to ask me whether I would speak at an event he is arranging with police and crime commissioners. I would be delighted to speak at such an event and hope that by doing so I give force and the Government’s backing to exactly the type of activity that he brings to our attention. Diary permitting, obviously, I say yes, thank you, to that invitation.

The second point was about bringing together a group of police and crime commissioners. I think that the hon. Gentleman suggested a group of 10. I am interested in that, and would like to consider what we could do and how officials might want to organise it. Of course, the Home Office must do a difficult balancing act: we cannot tell police forces that we are letting go and that we want police and crime commissioners with their direct electoral mandate to make decisions about their time and budgets in their area and then, as soon as we have said it, tell them that we are going to organise lots of events where we will tell them how to organise their affairs. We want to get the right balance, and we want them to take the leadership role. However, the Home Office Ministers met all the police and crime commissioners on Monday to talk through some of the programme and the activities that we have in the Home Office, to introduce them to some of the ideas. I see huge virtue in sharing early intervention best practice, particularly with police and crime commissioners who are interested. I am keen to work with the hon. Gentleman on ideas of that type, and on other projects, to make further progress on early intervention.