Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

My understanding is that that is why picking areas has been delegated to local authorities. I would extend it so that the measure is venue-specific. There are some proactive, good venues and there should be an incentive to encourage that; the opposite should apply to establishments that are perhaps less proactive and more responsible for the minority of problems.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s last point. The measure would be very effective in creating a safe environment in some areas of Portsmouth such as Guildhall walk, but in the north of the city, which I represent, many venues have no problems at all, and yet they would be severely penalised by such fees.

[Justin Tomlinson]

To sum up on that point, my plea is for common sense to be applied to each local area. I would go one step further. The Best Bar None and various Pubwatch schemes are so essential that they ought to be compulsory. It should be part of the licensing arrangement that somebody who is responsible for a venue attends those meetings. Clearly, the best examples are when local authorities, the local police and local venues work together. It is unacceptable if a late-night economy venue does not proactively participate in such schemes, so I would include such participation as a condition of the licence.

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[Dr Huppert]

That is obviously the case, but unless the hon. Gentleman has a fantastic suggestion for solving that problem—a problem that applies to waste collection and everything else, and in every other country—I do not see how we can address it. The same problem would apply with council boundaries, which are not always in the perfect location for all purposes.

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend mentions large council boundaries. Portsmouth, which I think is the most densely populated city in Europe apart from London, has a small council boundary, yet we have the same problem. There are areas with no problems where, if a fee was applied, it would be problematic for businesses to keep running.

[Dr Huppert]

I agree, and I think that my hon. Friend and I share the same objective. We do not want to return to the alcohol disorder zone approach, which clearly did not work and involved having to draw a complex wiggly line that would have exacerbated the problems. That is why I am suggesting ward-sized boundaries, which, while never being perfect, would take us a lot further and allow the various areas of Portsmouth to be separated—I do not know the city as well as she does, and I am sure that she could say which wards were more of an issue than others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I might be able to help the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman in a few minutes, as I am going to make a specific comment in relation to Wales. I suspect that they are going to ask me about Wales, so it might be in their interest to wait until then before they intervene.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I have been through police numbers with my chief constable in Hampshire, and there is not going to be any change to police numbers in community policing and in the policing of serious crime, or in the number of police who deal with sex offenders.

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is a good example, and there are other examples of forces such as Gloucestershire, where the number of officers visible and available has been increased by the chief constable as a result of what he has been able to do in other ways to deal with his budget.

We have already given communities across England and Wales access to detailed street-level crime and antisocial behaviour data. Only two months after launching the country’s first ever nationwide street-level crime maps, the website has received over 400 million hits, so we are already giving power back to the public. The Bill takes that local accountability to the next stage. The Association of Chief Police Officers has been fully engaged in the process of refining our proposals. We have listened to its suggestions, and to those of hon. Members. We have responded and been able to accommodate some of those suggestions.

We have included provision for each chief officer to become a corporation sole, which will allow them to employ staff and will give them greater control over their own force. We have strengthened the proposed oversight arrangements by including provisions for candidates to be subject to confirmation hearings by police and crime panels, who will be able to veto an appointment with a three-quarters majority. We have amended the Bill so that anyone who has been convicted of an imprisonable offence at any time will be unable to stand as a PCC. Any PCC convicted of such an offence would automatically be disqualified from office.

We have made a commitment with ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives to develop a protocol setting out the distinct role and powers of chief officers, PCCs and other bodies in the new policing landscape. It will be my responsibility as Home Secretary to issue a strategic policing requirement for the response to national threats. These are all sensible and constructive changes that will give us a better Bill and ultimately an even better police service. I thank ACPO and hon. Members for their help with that.

I am delighted that in Committee, the Opposition conceded the principle of democratic reform in policing. Unfortunately, they are still suggesting the wrong type of reform. Only 7% of people have even heard of police authorities, and only 8% of local authority wards in England and Wales are represented on their police authority. Police authorities are not effective at doing what they are supposed to do. Fewer than one in three police authorities inspected last year were found to be performing well. They have neither the democratic mandate to set police priorities nor the capability to scrutinise police performance, so tinkering at the edges of police authorities, as the Opposition spokesmen seemed to suggest in Committee, will not do.