Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley, in a reversal of roles, with you keeping me in order rather than the historical position.

This is an important report. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, on the very thorough way in which he introduced it and explained its contents. I will focus on its substance; however, I note that the Committee’s inquiry was initiated in an unusual way. I want to make it absolutely clear that it is right that we, as parliamentarians, stand up for a courageous whistleblower and look carefully, as the Committee has done, at the details that lie behind the complaint.

[Mrs Gillan]

One recommendation in the report was that the Home Affairs Committee hold an inquiry into the treatment of whistleblowers in the police. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of whether that has happened or whether there is any possibility that that will be looked at by the Home Affairs Committee, as it was quite a strong recommendation?

[Mr Brown]

I understand the recommendation. It is indeed a strong one and one that I support, but it is no longer my function to try to sort out demarcation disputes in this place, so although I have some experience of trying to do so, I will leave that to others, who are perhaps in a better position than I am to give a definitive answer to the point that the right hon. Lady quite rightly raises.

Today’s debate is the culmination of the Public Administration Committee’s work, which has been an effective parliamentary activity, and I congratulate the Chair and the rest of the Committee on their work. The Committee found strong evidence of under-recorded crime, which it attributed to lax compliance with the agreed national standards of victim-focused crime recording. In particular, sexual crimes such as rape were under-recorded as crimes.

The principal underlying cause is the conflict between achievement of targets and core policing values. That is a tremendously important point. The resources available to individual police forces must have a bearing on all this. However, especially in the case of sexual crimes such as rape, the emphasis must be on core policing values. Victims of those crimes must know that the police force is there to protect them, to take their complaint seriously and to be proactive in both recording the complaint as a crime and dealing with it as such.

The report has struck a raw nerve. As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex has already pointed out, the UK Statistics Authority has stripped police-recorded crime data of its quality kitemark. My hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) quite rightly asked in an intervention how serious that is. It is very serious. Decision makers rely on statistical evidence. If we believe in factual, evidence-based decision making, the evidence has to be accurate; if it is not, the decisions that follow will not necessarily be as focused as they should be. It would be important for any public authority, but given the special duties that go with the office of police constable, it is extraordinarily serious for the police.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one problem with regard to sex offences, and particularly with sex offenders under the age of 16, is that there is an assumption that many girls—sometimes boys, as well—get into their own mess? They must be treated as victims in all these cases, and each and every case must be investigated, even if the girls or boys thought it was a nice thing to do.

[Mr Brown]

The hon. Gentleman’s question is about minors. If a minor complains of an offence of that kind, or somebody does so on their behalf, the facts should be recorded and investigated. Children are not playthings for adults to do with as they want. Our whole society should protect children, not leave them exposed to the sort of criminality that has been going on. That is why both the recording and the investigation of that sort of offence are of fundamental importance.

[Mr Jenkin]

To make a plea of mitigation in defence of the police, there are occasions when an offence is reported—perhaps even one as serious as rape—that involves two minors and it might actually be the right decision not to involve the criminal law. There must be an element of discretion, as it might be in the interests of neither party to involve the law in a particular case. The point that we are making is that that discretion has been used so widely in some constabularies that it cannot possibly be justified.

[Mr Brown]

I have made no argument against the use of discretion. My argument is against not treating such matters seriously in the first place—putting the statistical outcome before the value-led policing outcome. Minors, who are under the age of consent, are entitled to society’s protection. It may be that invoking the criminal law is not an appropriate response, but that should be decided after all the facts have been investigated and are known, and a decision has been made on the individual merits of the case. The decision about whether to investigate the case or to treat it as a crime should be driven not by the need to get a statistical outcome, but by the real outcome of protecting the youngster. That point comes through very strongly in the report. The hon. Gentleman raises a slightly tangential point. I do not think we are arguing against each other about the thrust of the report or what should be happening.

The report finds that the Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority have all been “far too passive”. We should not be incentivising the mis-recording of crime through a drive to meet numerical targets. The integrity of crime data is vital, as is the response of individual police commissioners, chief constables and their police forces.

At this point, I want to say something about my police force. The response of the Northumbria police force, which covers my constituency, has been exemplary. It is a good police force’s reply to just criticism. For Northumbria, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary made relatively minor criticisms of the no-crime recording for robberies. HMIC found slightly more serious discrepancies for the recording of violent offences and real cause for concern over the recording of reported rapes as “no-crime”—the issue that is absolutely at the core of the report.

The criticism is just, and the response clear and firm. Rather than wait for the report’s publication, Northumbria police, with the police and crime commissioner working closely with the chief constable, have gone back and reviewed every “no-crime” case involving rape since October 2011. That amounts to 153 cases in total and of the initial assessment, 54 cases were identified as requiring further investigation. That is about a third of cases, which tallies broadly with the results of HMIC’s sample. Each case has been reopened as a crime and will be reinvestigated by the review team, which will contact victims and work jointly with a local rape support group to ensure that proper support is in place for individuals. A new team of officers has been brought in to conduct this review and 48 officers involved in the previous investigation have been given formal notifications as part of the standard procedure in such cases.

The proactive good governance and strong challenge provided by Northumbria’s police and crime commissioner, working closely and well with the chief constable, have brought about that swift and responsive action. It was the objective of Northumbria police to ensure that the force takes crime seriously and that, when issues emerge, it responds promptly and properly. Nowhere is that more important than with brutal crimes of violence against the vulnerable and defenceless, who are almost always women.

The police are right to take this stand—I support them in what they are doing—but it comes at a cost. Police budgets are under formidable pressure, and for historic reasons, Northumbria police are more reliant on national funding for a proportion of their total income than any other force in the country. Further budgetary cuts will make it even harder to run the service in the way that we want.

In Northumbria police, we have an example of an able police and crime commissioner working closely with an able chief constable to achieve the results that the public want. All three police and crime commissioners in the north-east of England are making an effective contribution to the role, so much so that, at least in our region, we should give this new idea a chance to bed in. Contemplating abolishing the role and reverting to the previous arrangements is premature.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to conclude this debate under your chairmanship.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on the comprehensive nature of his response, which I will come to in a moment. It underlines the advantage of a Westminster Hall debate: the devoted few can turn up and discuss at length, and cross-examine the Minister at length on, the issues raised in a report. I speak as one who was a little bit cynical about the Westminster Hall idea when it was first mooted.

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who contributed to this debate, and I particularly thank Committee members, present and not present, who have supported this work. I think that they will agree that this has been one of the most exciting, influential and important reports that we have produced in this Parliament. It is already having quite an impact, alongside the impact of others, whom I commend, who are having to put this matter right.

I welcome the support of the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for this report. He was, if I caught him correctly—if I may intrude on an internal debate in the Labour party—questioning the wisdom of the Labour party’s decision to abolish police and crime commissioners in what appears to be a precipitate way.

[Mr Nicholas Brown]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman did catch me correctly.

[Mr Jenkin]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s courage in breaking the rules, as all ex-Chief Whips do; they all finish up ignoring the injunctions of their own Whips.

Police and crime commissioners or elected mayors have been agents of change in this debate; I have witnessed it myself. They are there as people to talk to who are directly accountable to their publics, albeit that the turnouts were lousy and the by-election was a fiasco. There is great opportunity to build for the future. I hope that the shadow Minister will reflect on the fact that we want more democracy and more accountability, not less. Let us see how we can improve the institution, not just go back to what was there before—to anonymous, ineffective police committees that may have contained many worthy people, but people who did not have the profile, legitimacy or resource to carry out the function of local police accountability that we need them to carry out.

I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who brought our attention to today’s ONS release about the crime figures, and to the difference between police recorded crime and the crime survey for England and Wales. That early pointer should perhaps have led to more action more quickly on this subject, because it indicated that police recorded crime was falling fasting than the survey suggested could be justified, and that should have been acted on sooner.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), whom I nearly call my hon. Friend because he sits on the Committee with me, emphasised rightly that we want a society in which we can live without fear of crime, and where we can send our children out to play in the streets without fear. I certainly had that kind of childhood, as he did. I suspect that most of our constituents can still give their children such a childhood, but the fear of crime drives people to be risk-averse and fearful. That is why police and crime commissioners should be setting targets on how to reassure their public that they live in safe neighbourhoods, safe counties and safe cities. Essex, for example, is one of the safest counties to live in, but on talking to people about crime, it is clear that they do not believe that. We do not talk about crime in terms of reassurance; we tend to highlight what is going wrong and mount campaigns to defeat crime, which just increases fear of crime. The hon. Gentleman raises an apposite point.

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for speaking so comprehensively in support of this report. I am mindful of what he said about the crime survey for England and Wales. We had some evidence, but did not feel that we had enough to make comprehensive recommendations. The Committee may embark on another inquiry, although possibly in another Parliament, because we are running out of time in this one.

There is an issue about how to keep the crime survey for England and Wales up to speed and, indeed, how to keep its sample large enough so that we can have regionally and locally specific information. At the level at which we conduct the survey, local information is completely meaningless, because the sample sizes locally are much too small. In that regard, we are entirely dependent on police recorded crime to tell us what is going on, which is why those are such important statistics.

Again, I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on his comprehensive reply to this debate. He emphasised that nobody has an interest in having inaccurate crime statistics. I recognise that, as do the police. He listed a number of actions being taken, including the responsibility of Ministers to clarify the respective roles, responsibilities and tasks—the various component parts of the system—in relation to producing crime figures. The Home Office is now taking much more responsibility for that, and laudably so. In my conversations with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, she responded positively to this report. I am grateful to her and to my right hon. Friend the Minister for their responses.

The Minister mentioned the force crime registrars. I reluctantly accept that the practicality of our recommendations in that respect could have been refined. I welcome his point on reporting; access to the chief constable is vital and the relevant people should be able to go directly to the chief constable when they are concerned. Their training is important, too.

The Minister emphasised the obligation to report a crime, even if it is subsequently to be no-crimed. He does not question that that discretion has to exist. He talked a bit about the target-driven culture, but said this was a matter for operational independence. It took a long time—for me—for the penny to drop in respect of how wasteful it is for organisations to try to function without the necessary trust and integrity in relationships between the people working within them.

On this business of misreporting crime, I cannot emphasise enough to the House that when all that was in the media, I walked around the Palace, my constituency and London and spoke with police officers. I asked them, “What do you think of police recorded crime? Have you heard about this?” Absolutely to a man and a woman, they would say, “Oh, we all knew that that was going on.” The cynicism with which they expressed their contempt for their command chain for allowing something to continue under its nose, month after month, year after year, because it was in its interest, cannot be overstated.

It sounds as though I am being very hard on police leadership and saying that they are all very bad people. I have been taken to task by senior police officers and police and crime commissioners for being too outspoken on this matter, but I believe that we have an opportunity to release the energy pent up in the anger and frustration on this issue, and use it to ensure better policing and that we use our resources much better, instead of hiding information within the system and suspiciously looking up and down the command chain and fighting the authorities within the police. A genuine atmosphere of openness and co-operation would release energy and resources to serve the public better.

Essex police is having a real root-and-branch think about how it applies the ethics code. It is releasing people to have conversations about how they regard and treat each other in a way that has not happened before. That needs to happen in every constabulary. There will be some people who feel threatened by those conversations and think that they undermine their historical position, their authority or how they have done business, and they will fight it. They are the ones who need to go. The vast majority of police officers will feel, “At last, we are talking about the real stuff and we will get stuff done better than we have ever done it before, because we will tell each other the truth.”

It is the lack of truth behind these statistics and the way that they have been falsified—in some cases very badly—that indicate that all has not been well in the culture and ethics of the police, and that is why I lay so much emphasis on the recommendation that the Committee on Standards in Public Life holds an inquiry. Public confidence demands it. We have had Hillsborough, Savile and the Lawrence affair. So many things have left a big question mark and a deep scar on the public’s confidence in policing. It is not that the police are bad people; they are good people who might have got into some bad habits. That happens in every organisation. To change habits and behaviour is the hardest and most painful thing to do in any change programme in any organisation, but it has to be done. We have the opportunity to do it on the back of this inquiry. I am not sure that the Minister has yet grasped the scale of the problem and the scale of the opportunity to improve policing. I leave it at that.

I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating the points he made in his letter to me on whistleblowers. He emphasised the need to consider immunity from disciplinary proceedings for whistleblowers. That is incredibly important. What we are doing in the health service, with the post-Mid-Staffs inquiry and all that, is exactly parallel to what we need to do in the police, and to what is happening in our fire service in Essex. It is about empowering people who have to tell the truth. At their best, that is how the armed forces have always worked. There is a belief sometimes that in the uniformed services, it always has to be about command and control, instilling discipline and people doing as they are told. Relationships in the armed forces at their best are not transactional in that way; they are about sharing intent, understanding objectives, supporting each other through tasks and then reviewing and learning from the mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. I spoke to a rather more traditional senior police officer, who is now in the House of Lords, who told me that his philosophy of police leadership was that provided the officer could explain that what they did on the night was the right thing to do on the basis of the information they had at the time, he would always back them. It is that kind of supportive leadership that most chief constables understand and aspire to, but it obviously has not existed for police recorded crime. It does not exist all the time in all police forces in the way that it should, which is why we have such an opportunity. Whistleblowers are an important part of leadership by involvement, listening, understanding and supporting. The shutting down of people who try to tell the truth is one of the indicators that an organisation is not functioning optimally. That is what we want. [Interruption.]