Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

There are three specific issues on the table. The first is what we did in December, which allows for new, tough financial penalties on companies—by which I mean companies as a whole—that break the rules. The second is the proposal that we have consulted on and are about to respond to, which would lower the threshold at which enforcement action can be taken and produce a fine of up to £500,000, which should be a deterrent. The issue of holding individual company members to account is more complex and will not be the first of the two things we do.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The claims management regulator is often held up as the model for how to limit the number of nuisance calls due to the way in which the number of payment protection insurance call numbers has been reduced. However, recent discussions I have had with the Association of British Insurers indicate that it may not be working quite as planned. Will the Minister commit to a meeting as soon as possible to review whether the process is working as well as possible?

[Simon Hughes]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s assiduous work on this issue and I am very happy to pick up on the issue that the claims management regulation unit may not be as effective in practice as we believe it is in theory. We are determined to protect the public. Nuisance phone calls and nuisance texts, particularly to the vulnerable, are unacceptable. They must be dealt with and we will do that with my hon. Friend’s help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I mentioned that we have re-commissioned the provision for skills with a focus on employability. That must be the right approach. It is important to address the causes of offending to establish whether this is one of them and to ensure that we have proper programmes of rehabilitation in prison that will support people on their release to enter the world of work and responsibility.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that literacy is a key part of any rehabilitation strategy? Will he update us on what the Government are doing to tackle poor literacy, not only to help the future employment opportunities of those convicted, but to increase the prospects for work within prisons to be meaningful and transformative?

[Nick Herbert]

Again, this is an area where we seek to improve provision. There is, of course, a role here for the state, but, as I mentioned last time, there is a role for voluntary groups as well. I mentioned the excellent Toe By Toe scheme, which uses former offenders or prisoners to encourage literacy and to teach skills to others. There is a very high correlation between illiteracy and the learning difficulties of prisoners in our jails. We need to address those issues if prisoners are to have a chance of not reoffending on release.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

We oppose the cuts because they affect the most vulnerable in society and run the risk of decimating the social welfare and legal advice community. Even at this stage, I urge the Government to rethink their plans. If they will not, I shall ask again, and I am pleased to see that hon. Members from all parties, save the Conservative party, have tabled amendments on this matter for debate today. I hope—I say this in the spirit of wanting to protect those of our constituents who are most vulnerable and most reliant and who need access to justice more than ever today—that those amendments will be pressed to a vote by hon. Members, particularly those on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and that they will see fit to support our amendments when we push them forward.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

In the interests of brevity I shall speak only to amendment 116 to which I have added my name. It has been more than 30 years since the National Consumer Council referred to access to advice as the fourth right of citizenship. It was ahead of its time in predicting the coming of an information age in which people’s ability to live full lives as responsible citizens would depend on access to organised, specialist information in order to navigate complex consumer choices, labour markets and state bureaucracy and law. In no area could that be more important than in relation to legal advice in a police station, where the presence of a lawyer acting for a defendant is crucial, although I might not have thought that between 1990 and 1998 when I was a serving police officer in Edinburgh. Solicitors are there to ensure that suspects’ rights are respected, that they are not physically abused, that their confessions are not forged and that they are not detained for longer than is legally allowed. The presence of a lawyer not only protects defendants from police abuse but protects the police from false allegations by defendants about what happened during an interrogation, for example.

Clause 12 provides the Secretary of State with the flexibility to subject legal aid in police stations to a system of means-testing. The Ministry of Justice has made it clear that such proposals would be modelled on the system currently operating in Scotland, where people who earn more than a certain amount—in Scotland, a weekly disposable income of £105—have to pay a contribution towards the cost of their legal aid. The current system of police station advice in Scotland is only a year old, but the Law Society of Scotland has already stated that it is complex process to operate and to explain to clients, many of whom are in a vulnerable situation.

The experience north of the border also shows that the provision of adequate verification undoubtedly lengthens the suspect’s time in a police station and that the solicitor often has no evidential proof that the client is eligible or of what their contribution should be. Solicitors also find that the prospects of claiming the contribution from the client are limited when the detention ends without criminal charges. Consequently, in Scotland in the past year, uptake of advice in police stations has fallen to around 25% of cases—roughly half that in England and Wales.

The Minister will also know that the Scottish situation has been somewhat complicated recently by the judgment in the Cadder case. Previously, when I was a serving officer, suspects could be detained without charge for up to six hours and questioned without the presence of a solicitor. Following that case in the Supreme Court last year, the Lord Advocate issued guidelines, and emergency legislation has since been enacted, to provide suspects who are detained by the police with the right to

“a private consultation with a solicitor”.

That can be either before questioning or at any stage during questioning. Moreover, experience has shown that it is often more expensive to administer means-testing than to operate it. Cutting out legal aid in police stations will lead to false economy, not least because the courts will be clogged up with unmeritorious or unprepared cases, or proceedings without a solicitor present will be open to legal challenge.

Early advice in a police station may save many social and economic costs, most of which must be picked up by other public services. Moreover, who will ask what someone’s earnings are, or how much their mortgage is? Those questions will have to be asked in extremely stressful situations. Will the Minister explain how the proposals will work without the whole process becoming extremely unwieldy?

Furthermore, will the Minister explain why such a provision is in the Bill when I and colleagues received assurances that there was no intention of the clause ever coming into effect? If the Government have no intention of using the power, why leave it in the Bill? The Minister has effectively asked us to sign a blank cheque, but assured us that he will never have to cash it. Much as I trust the Minister, that is no way to propose or to implement new legislation, because it leaves pointless regulation in statute, which because of assurances from Ministers might never have been properly scrutinised. That is a bad precedent, and a dangerous one, which should not allowed to continue.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 17, tabled in my name. It is well known that many problems in social welfare law are interconnected and that clients invariably approach agencies with clusters of problems, which is why the social welfare law cluster of housing, benefit, debt and employment was introduced in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said, all MPs have seen constituents who arrive with carrier bags of unopened mail from various agencies. It is impossible to deal with one issue—for example, electricity disconnection—without dealing with problems such as tax credit underpayment and illegal deduction of wages. It is the natural state of affairs that one problem leads to another, and the merit of not-for-profit agencies dealing with that cluster is the availability of specialisms in a one-stop shop, and the ability to drill down to the root cause of the issue, which may be wrongful refusal of benefits or unfair dismissal leading to debt issues and potential homelessness.

My new clause would allow agencies to deal with all the issues. They would not have to take a piecemeal approach, but could make difficult decisions on which issues are legally aidable and which are not, so that the individual would not be left to struggle with the complex non-legally aidable issues alone.

Make no mistake; the issues that the Government wish to remove from scope are complex. The welfare benefits that the Government wish to remove from scope completely have 20 volumes of guidance, thousands of pages of case law, and thousands of statutory instruments, clauses and schedules. The Child Poverty Action Group’s handbook on welfare benefits and tax credits alone has 1,600 pages. In 2010, the Department for Work and Pensions issued 8,690 pages of advice to decision makers. That advice is not specialist. Can people rely on help from Jobcentre Plus or the Benefits Agency, the agencies that turned down their original claim? I do not think so.

The Bill is being enacted at precisely the same time as the introduction of universal credit, which will affect 19 million individual claimants and 8 million households. I remember the change from supplementary benefit to income support. The number of people who needed advice rocketed, and many important cases were appealed by advice agencies, which had far-reaching consequences for many people, not just individual claimants. That is being denied in the Bill.

In 2010, under the current system, there were 160,000 appeals, more than half of which were decided in favour of the claimant. To remove support from individuals who have been wrongly and unlawfully denied their benefit—in more than half of cases that was indeed the decision—and to deal with the rent arrears caused by that denial of benefit at the point of eviction, is perverse in the extreme.

Early intervention and an holistic approach save money. Even the Minister admitted that early advice may reduce costs further down the road, but he chose to save £1 now at the cost, according to research from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, of £8.80 for every benefit case, £7.13 for every employment case, £2.98 for every debt case and £2.34 for every housing case. This is blinkered short-termism at its most extreme.

I would like to give a couple of examples of linked problems where dealing with just the issue that remains in scope will be counter-productive. A client had multiple priority and non-priority debts, including rent arrears, and was facing the threat of possession proceedings. She had prioritised credit card repayments due to pressure applied by her bank and debt collection agencies, and had fallen behind with her rent. She suffered mental health problems, and her teenage daughter was becoming ill because of the stress facing her mother. She was working and studying to improve her situation, but had lost benefits and was appealing that, with help. Under the Government’s proposals, there would be no help with that appeal. The only help available would be to deal with the immediate repossession issue. The credit card and other debts would not be dealt with and I surmise that it is extremely likely that that client would return in exactly the same position, or worse, at a later date.

A constituent had been dismissed from employment and was being assisted with an unfair dismissal claim. Stress was making them ill and unable to work, and there was also an appeal against benefit sanctions for leaving their job. Owing to the lack of income, the bills were mounting up and mortgage arrears were accruing. Under the new proposals the client would have to wait until they were in imminent danger of losing their home, and that would be the only issue within the scope of the scheme. If ever there were examples of false economy, surely those are such.

The most vulnerable will bear the brunt of the cuts. The Legal Services Commission’s figures show that 62% of those affected by removal of welfare benefits from scope will be those with disabilities. Indeed, there is concern about whether agencies will be able to provide advice even to those fortunate individuals who still qualify for legal aid. The cuts to social welfare law disproportionately affect not-for-profit advice agencies with 77% of the funding withdrawn going from those agencies. Some 54% of citizens advice bureaux and more than 70% of law centres believe that they will not exist after 2013 if this Bill becomes law. There is no clear plan or strategy for the sector, just death by a thousand cuts.

Wigan metropolitan borough council currently has 3,080 cases funded by legal aid, but 2,342 will go out of scope if the Bill is enacted. At a rough estimate of 300 cases per caseworker, resources will drop from 10 specialists to help my constituents to 2. Their ability to deal with even the severely curtailed legal aid cases will be massively impacted, let alone their ability to deal with linked issues. Will the Minister say what cross-Departmental plans are in place to deal with the destabilisation of the not-for-profit advice sector, and how will linked issues, which are often the root cause of an immediate threat of eviction, be dealt with in future?

I want to address briefly the issue of whether those who qualify will be able to navigate the system and reach the help they need and not fall at the first barrier—the telephone gateway. In the all-too-inadequate time allowed in Committee, when the agencies presented their evidence, they all stated that the telephone gateway will be yet another barrier and will deny some clients access to the services they need. Indeed, Steve Hynes, director of the Legal Action Group, commented on research by that group—my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith referred to it. He said:

“if you want a legal system that people do not use, deliver it through telephone advice because the people who pass the means test tend to be the ones who do not have telephones”

In my experience, individuals with a number of problems often cannot focus on the most serious issue for many reasons. It often takes a considerable amount of time and experience to untangle the knotted ball of problems into single strands, and then to decide which is the most immediate and serious. For example, I saw a client who was most upset because, for the first time, she could not pay Provident. She was really upset that when it came to collecting the debt, her neighbour would know that she had problems and could not pay. Eventually, she let me examine all the other documents that she had, and it was apparent that she had been paying the company at the expense of her rent and was in danger of eviction. To tease that information out over the telephone without sight of the documents that she eventually handed over would be almost impossible, and I believe that that client would have been told her issue was not legally aidable and sent away still prioritising the wrong debt and facing eviction.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not just reading that out; he normally does better than simply reading out Whips’ documents. He will remember, as I do, that in Committee the Liberal Democrats actually voted against their own amendments—

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Once.

[Vernon Coaker]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman admits it. I have never known anyone vote against their own amendments, but there we go.

--- Later in debate ---

Such is the importance of the matter, I must say that, from a procedural point of view, I should like amendment 98 and the associated amendments in lieu to be put to the vote at the appropriate time.

[Mike Crockart]

I want to speak in favour of a number of amendments. Before doing so, however, I make a plea from the heart as a new Member of the House. I am working with the Plain English Campaign to urge simplicity and transparency in product design and communications coming from the financial services industry. Having faced a minefield of amendments, amendments to amendments and disagreements with amendments over the past few days, I suggest that the Plain English Campaign could well assist this House with some of its processes.

Let me start with amendments 70 to 78 and 80 to 83, which deal with the composition of the police and crime panels. Originally the Bill allowed for a minimum of 10 members from local authorities, or one member from each authority for police areas with 11 or more authorities, and two non-political co-opted members in each instance. Our amendments in Committee sought to create additional capacity within the membership of the police and crime panels. The Lords amendment would mean that there was still a minimum of 10 political members and two non-political co-opted members but allow for a resolution by each panel to appoint any extra number of co-opted members provided that the total number does not exceed 20.

We spent a great deal of time on this subject in Committee and debated at least 40 probing amendments to the Government’s initial proposals. Then, as now, the key issue for the composition of the panel was how well it could manage to meet its balanced appointment objective as set out in schedule 6(30)(3), which bears quoting:

“The ‘balanced appointment objective’ referred to in this paragraph is the objective that the appointed members of a police and crime panel (when taken together)…represent all parts of the relevant police area”—

it says “parts”, not “local authorities”, to seek to ensure geographical balance—and

“represent the political make-up of…the relevant local authority, or…the relevant local authorities (when taken together)”.

That is a very important sub-paragraph. Our amendments proposing to increase the size of the police and crime panels would have given the PCPs a small amount of wriggle room to meet those geographical and political balance objectives. That involved an extra two members specifically to address concerns about balance.

The Minister agreed to reflect on those amendments, and I am happy to see that what has come back here today is a significant improvement, not only on what was initially proposed but on what was included in my amendment. While my amendment would have given an additional two members to help with the balance, these new proposals give a potential eight extra members who could be co-opted on to a police and crime panel, all of whom would be subject to the balanced appointment objective. This is a significant change which gives the vast majority of PCPs the flexibility they will need to ensure that we achieve an effective body for reviewing and scrutinising the police and crime commissioner across all the constituent local authorities. Of the 41 police areas, 31 would have the potential to use the maximum eight additional co-optees and only five would have fewer than an additional four members.

The one question that remains, although the Minister has already dealt with it to a great extent, is what constitutes, or indeed necessitates, the agreement of the Secretary of State to allow for the further co-opted members to be appointed. It is clear that this power is necessary. It would be bitter-sweet to have identified the issue and proposed the amendment to deal with it only for the Secretary of State to fail to agree to the use of that power. I would like to hear more about what circumstances the Secretary of State would take into account before making that decision—as, I am sure, would those who tabled amendment 80. I do, however, thank the Minister for listening and welcome this improvement to the Bill.

Lords amendments 69 and 98 deal with the power of veto for police and crime panels over the setting of the precept and the proposed appointment of a chief constable. The issue that consumed more time in Committee than any other was that of the powers available to the PCP to discharge its duty to review and scrutinise the decisions and actions of the commissioner. We had a wide-ranging debate that examined many possible additional powers. We agreed that the sharpest teeth—or some might argue the only teeth—that the PCP will have is the power to veto the proposed precept and the proposed appointment of a chief constable.

I tabled amendments in Committee to achieve precisely what is now being proposed by the Government. In doing so, I challenged the Minister to reflect on whether any other veto power had such a high threshold of 75%. We argued, with the support of the Local Government Association, that the three-quarters majority required for the veto was too stringent and impractical to provide an effective block on the commissioner. No democratic system places executive power in the hands of an individual without providing suitable and strict checks and balances, and no strong democratic body requires a three-quarters majority to provide such a check on the executive. A veto by a two-thirds majority vote is given to the London Assembly and councils with directly elected mayors in budget matters. That would be strongly preferable and would give suitable strength to the authority of panels. It would align the commissioner model with a tried and tested framework for holding a democratic executive to account.

The move to a two-thirds majority will strengthen local democracy and accountability, and it will be a major step forward. When I made that point in Committee, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) agreed with me, so much so that he was desperate for me to push the matter to a vote, despite the promise of the Minister to reflect on the points raised. However, I took the Minister at his word and I am happy to see these amendments today.

[Vernon Coaker]

You voted against them.

[Mike Crockart]

No, those are not the matters that the hon. Gentleman pushed to the vote.

In Committee, the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) asked the Minister what percentage of amendments moved by Liberal Democrats were withdrawn rather than pressed to a Division. He was told to work it out for himself. I am happy to help him today. It was 100%. And yet, here we are with significant changes to the composition and powers of the police and crime panels. The Minister said in Committee:

“We are all adjusting to coalition politics, but it is interesting that Opposition Members are finding it harder than we are.”––[Official Report, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, 8 February 2011; c. 456.]

Seven months on, that does not seem to have changed.

Finally, I would like to consider a missed opportunity that the Government may live to regret, although I hope not. Government Lords amendments 33, 87 and 88 relate to clause 31, which covers the suspension of police and crime commissioners. We discussed this provision in Committee and identified a drafting error, which I am happy to see has been corrected. We also discussed whether the correct threshold had been set for suspension. At present, suspension is possible only when an individual is charged with an offence punishable by a

“term of imprisonment exceeding two years.”

That threshold rules out a number of potential charges which, were they hanging over him, would seem to make it incredible that a police and crime commissioner could continue to hold a chief constable to account. Those charges include assault with intent to resist arrest, racially or religiously aggravated assault, racially or religiously aggravated harassment and a number of others that were outlined in Committee. I am disappointed that the Minister, after reflecting, has not included this change in his amendments.

The Minister did propose that the power for a police and crime commissioner to stand down voluntarily would be introduced. He said that that would provide a better way to deal with such situations. Alas, unless I am looking in the wrong place, that is not in the Bill or in the amendments. That is a missed opportunity, because it leaves the potential for embarrassing situations to arise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

I want to know exactly where the Liberal part of the Government stands on this. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether he supports my proposal that the police and crime panel should have the power to veto the dismissal of a chief constable?

[Mike Crockart]

I will make it very clear that I do not support the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, although there is an outstanding question and some further work is required. Employment law would look on the ability to dismiss someone without an appeal as being dubious at best, so there is possibly a legal aspect to look at. However, when we look at the powers in the Bill on the suspension and removal of chief constables, we see that the situation is not quite as simple as the hon. Gentleman makes out. It is not just a case of the police and crime commissioner wanting to get rid of the chief constable and his being gone the next day. A long, public process—six weeks—is kicked off, involving the panel, notifications and representations.

I do not believe for a second that any police and crime commissioner would set out on such an open and public process without a very strong case for the dismissal of a chief constable. To do so would lay the commissioner open to a very high level of public scrutiny. I cannot see a publicly elected official opening themselves up to that level of scrutiny without sufficient cause. The process that the Bill lays out will effectively stop that situation ever arising.

To conclude, the Bill brings public accountability of the policing function out from the shadows. Community safety, and the fight against crime and disorder, deserve nothing less.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who has followed this Bill throughout its passage. He served on the Public Bill Committee, as did other right hon. and hon. Members who are in the Chamber, and he has clearly devoted a huge amount of thought over recent weeks and months to what aspects of the Bill need to be amended. Given that I am arriving at this late stage of the debate, I am grateful for the benefit of his thoughts, just as I am grateful to other hon. Members for their contributions.

My hon. Friend referred to his work with the Plain English Campaign on simplifying the language of financial products and so on. For new Members and perhaps those of us who are less familiar with speaking in debates on Lords amendments, he also pointed out how important it is to ensure that we get our terminology right. In that light, I am rising to speak to amendment (a) to Lords amendment 80, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Other Cornwall Members who are in the Chamber are very sympathetic to the proposal, although their names are not appended to it, and we heard another hon. Member raise this issue at Question Time.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), with whom I had the pleasure of spending some time to discuss the Academies Act 2010, said that he did not want to intrude on any private grief in Devon and Cornwall. I can assure him that it is not grief, and nor is it private—we are here discussing the matter in public. It will not come as a surprise to him or anyone else that concerns have been raised in Cornwall, which is represented by a unitary authority that brought together the functions of the previous six district councils and Cornwall county council to form one body. The concern is that, as of right, we would have only one representative on the police and crime panel or crime and police panel—whichever way round it goes.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Roughly, the spending reductions we are making are from £9 billion a year to £7 billion a year. The discount for early guilty pleas was meant to contribute about £100 million of that. The move away from indeterminate sentences to a more sensible determinate sentence-based system will in the long run save quite a lot of money, because at the moment thousands of people are in prison and no one has the first idea when or if they will ever get out. Of course we have to readdress the issue, now that we have consulted; we have now settled the financial position with the Chief Secretary and will look for more efficiencies and savings. I am quite confident that we will find them, because so far we are making very good progress in making considerable reductions in the bloated expenditure that we inherited.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with me and my previous experience, not only as a wishy-washy liberal but as a serving police officer, that one of the major barriers to rehabilitating offenders is the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974? Thirty-seven years is quite long enough to wait for a reform. When shall we see it?

[Mr Clarke]

I hope soon. I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s views, with which I have considerable sympathy. We take very seriously the workings of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and its impact on reoffending and rehabilitation, and policy is being finalised at the moment.

Policing (West Midlands)

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. That was intelligence-led policing; it was not about flooding the area with a large number of police. Labour Members are making a direct correlation between numbers of police and falling crime, but the two do not necessarily match up. Many countries have larger police numbers but higher rates of crime. It is more important to use the number of police officers efficiently. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the situation in 1997. In 1997, I was a serving police officer in Lothian and Borders police, so I come with a certain amount of experience. The level of patronising talk directed at new Members by those in the Labour party who say that we are just parroting phrases that we are given is poor.

[Jack Dromey]

With the greatest of respect, the hon. Gentleman may once have been a police officer, but he is clearly not in contact with the modern police service. Locally, the police told me that they had the time and resources, including front-line officers backed by support and intelligence, to tackle quickly and effectively a problem that was giving rise to serious concern in the Stockland Green area. Precisely because the community welcomed such an initiative by the police, real anger is now being expressed about what is happening.

Police (Public Trust)

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing what has turned into a wide-ranging debate on an important subject: public trust in police forces, a subject that is quite distinct from the effectiveness of police forces. Some of the points that he made are very pertinent. It is clear that there are serious problems in the organisation of police forces: for example, the block on good officers developing and being promoted, especially to sergeant, that first hurdle of promotion. The 30-year limit on the service of police officers and the cost of the generous pension system are also issues. However, we must be careful not to damage the way policing works when we discuss whether that is effective or not. We need young, fit and able officers, but we also need the huge experience of older and perhaps less fit officers, who can often defuse situations, negating the need for a chase in the first place.

I want to concentrate on some of the factors that I feel have contributed to the decline in public trust in the police service over recent decades. The central question to which we inevitably return when discussing policing, and with which I have wrestled for 20 years since starting as a serving police officer, is: what are the police for? I must admit that 20 years ago I held a narrow view of police functions, having had the relevant sections of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 drilled into me. Much of that Act deals specifically with crime and its prevention, but it contains nothing about increasing public trust in the police. It was my firm belief then that it was the role of politicians, not the police, to deal with the fear of crime.

However, it should not come as too much of a surprise that, now that I am a politician, my view has changed substantially, although my experiences over the past 20 years have fed that change of mind. Back then I served as a beat officer, focusing entirely on crime, and community officers dealt in the main with building links with local communities, schools and businesses. When officers were needed to police demonstrations or football matches, it was generally those community officers whose duties were changed, not mine, which reflected the absolute focus on crime.

That has continued over the past 20 years, unfortunately aided and abetted by the previous Government’s top-down focus. For the 13 years Labour was in government, it continually undermined local police forces by creating central crime targets dictated from Whitehall. That means that the Home Office now judges a police force on how many crimes it detects and clears up. That measurement is the opposite of what I think we should be looking for from local police services.

The public do not necessarily want the police to be good only at solving crimes after they have been committed; they also want them to be good at preventing them. When I started serving, it was considered to be a good night when a PC came back from the beat and no crime had been committed and no victims had suffered loss or injury. With Whitehall targets, it is now considered to be better for a PC to have spent an entire eight-hour shift dealing with arrests, regardless of the nature of the offence. That culture of central target setting has put pressure on officers to behave in ways in which they might not otherwise choose to act, focusing on otherwise minor offences in order to reach targets and criminalising many groups that have traditionally been supporters of the police. That is not new. I remember being taken as a probationary constable to a local shopping centre in Edinburgh to be shown by my sergeant how easy it was to catch people as they left the car park without having put their seatbelts on. Remote target setting has many such unintended consequences.

New responsibilities have been placed on police forces, such as the recently scrapped policing pledge and confidence targets. More than 4,600 new criminal offences have been created since 1997—more than 28 a month. All that massively increases bureaucracy and overloads police officers with paperwork, removing them from the streets where the public time and again say they want to see them. Surveys continue to show that many people’s top priority for policing is to see more bobbies on the beat.

Those new responsibilities also serve to promote the indiscriminate targeting of groups, using methods that are unacceptable to the public but which police forces may feel they can justify through the potential rewards of producing statistics that show how they are dealing with a particular Government priority. A recent example saw residents in Birmingham’s Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath neighbourhoods told that hundreds of CCTV cameras and automatic number plate-reading cameras were being installed to monitor speeding vehicles and antisocial behaviour among youths. Just days before the cameras were turned on, however, an investigative reporter found that those cameras were to be used by the Home Office and MI5 to monitor people entering and leaving those predominantly Muslim areas.

A follow-up report by the Thames Valley police commissioner gave a damning assessment showing that officers failed to comply with national CCTV regulations or to conduct proper consultation. They did not obtain statutory clearance for the use of covert cameras and there was little evidence that officers had even considered their legal obligations. Furthermore, attempts by the police to conceal the true purpose of the project caused significant damage to community relations, with one community leader reporting that relations had fallen back by at least a decade.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

With all due respect, it is easy with hindsight to criticise West Midlands police for that operation, but we do not know, and never will, what potential terrorist or criminal outrage that surveillance may have prevented. It is slightly unfair of my hon. Friend to take that case in isolation, because it is the duty of all police forces to remain utterly vigilant in an age of international and national terrorism.

[Mike Crockart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point, but that is the defence that is used when none other can be found: “We know things that you don’t.” In fact, what is being said is: “We may know things that you don’t.” That justifies any means by which communities are policed, which simply is not acceptable. Clear guidelines have been laid down for looking into those offences. We are having a major review of much of the terrorist legislation that is being used for such measures. I hope that we reach a position where we can deal effectively with such concerns and potential problems without using the types of behaviour that have damaged public trust in that police service.

Another example, highlighted this week in The Guardian, demonstrates the far more serious flipside of the racial problem outlined by the hon. Member for The Wrekin in relation to policing and justice more generally. It showed that, per capita, seven times as many black Britons were incarcerated than white Britons, which is an even higher ratio than in the United States, where four times as many black people are in prison than white people. Those data, which come from the recently published Equality and Human Rights Commission report on fairness in Britain, show just how much of an effect decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system have had on the black community. Another figure that is particularly striking, and that again goes to the heart of the targets culture, shows that black Britons constituted 15% of the stop and searches in Britain in 2008, despite making up only 3% of the population.

All the factors that I have outlined contributed to public confidence reaching new lows. In response to that, Labour again reverted to type, refusing to acknowledge that central meddling was the culprit, and tried to deal with the problem through targets, setting a target for improving confidence in forces’ local crime and disorder-fighting strategies by a minimum of 12%. It also set a national confidence target, to be measured by annual surveys.

What is the answer? How do we reconnect the police with the public they serve? There must be a wholesale revision of the interaction between the police and the public. The coalition’s plans to bring in locally elected police commissioners is certainly a step in the right direction, and there is certainly something to be said for increasing the local accountability of police forces. If communities are involved, they will be able to have more input into the priorities of local police forces, which will go a long way towards restoring trust in the force.

[Keith Vaz]

I ask the hon. Gentleman the following question because he is a former senior officer: does he think that, within the proposals for elected police commissioners, operational independence is guaranteed?

[Mike Crockart]

As it stands, the position is that operational independence must be maintained, and I would argue that it must be sacrosanct. To a large extent, operational decisions have to be made quickly, but that may not be possible under new structures. The amount of information that is needed to make such decisions is immediately available to senior police officers, and they are absolutely the right people to make those decisions.

I have some concerns about the detail of the scheme. I feel that it is probably not local enough, so I hope, as we have urged in our submission to the Home Office, that the plans will be trialled to ensure their effectiveness. It is clear that accountability for policing priorities and dialogue between the consumers of policing and the providers of it need to happen at a much lower level, and in a much more regular and inclusive way. Only by doing that will we restore a degree of public trust in the police and, in so doing, re-establish the principle of policing by consent. That will ultimately answer my original question, what are the police for? This is about working with and in communities to improve people’s lives.