Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]
Roger Williams Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Roger Williams
When my right hon. Friend takes evidence, will he focus on rural issues, because dividing the service between high risk cases and medium and low risk cases might make it uneconomic to deliver because the number of offenders in rural areas is so low?
Sir Alan Beith
My hon. Friend would be surprised if I did not take rural issues into account, given that I represent the most sparsely populated areas of England.
I give way to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is a member of my Select Committee.
Firearms Controls
Roger Williams Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Grahame M. Morris
That is an eminently sensible suggestion. I also have a couple of points to put to the Minister that I hope will elicit some consideration in a reply.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman makes a good suggestion. I am surprised that that is not being done at the moment. I once asked the police to attend at a particular place to prevent a breach of the peace. One of the people involved was later refused a shotgun licence, and blamed me for asking the police to attend. Such things are taken into account.
Grahame M. Morris
It is not automatic. One problem is inconsistency in how various police forces go about their task. I was about to ask the Minister about the training of licensing officers. While I welcome the Government’s and his commitment on new guidance, the basic problem is that it is still guidance, not a change in the law as such. When I have sought advice from people who are legally qualified—I have a deal of service in local government, and we often dealt with guidance on housing benefit and so on—the advice that I have got is that the legal status of the revised guidance is the same as that of the old guidance, which was clearly found wanting. We need a change in the law to mandate chief police officers to act in a particular way. We need to toughen up the laws in that area to deal with domestic violence.
One way to address the point made by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) is formal training for police officers who deal with firearms licences. The issue was noted by the coroner in his report on the Horden shootings. No formal training was available to officers in 2006-07 in Horden, where the perpetrator, Michael Atherton, applied for shotgun and firearms licences. More concerningly, it is evident that even today, after the lessons from Horden and other incidents around the country, little formal training is offered to police officers. The expectation is effectively that police officers learn on the job, presumably from more experienced colleagues. That could be hugely problematic and lead to enormous variations around the country.
Despite recognising in the introduction to the revised guidance published in December 2012 that firearms legislation and the subject of firearms generally are complex and highly specialised, the Home Office and Ministers provide no assurances that officers will be provided with suitable training. The guidance states:
“It is not practicable to provide comprehensive training for every police officer on the administration of the Firearms Acts.”
It should be possible. I hope that the Minister will offer some insight or clarification on what training is being made available to officers processing firearms applications. I do not believe that Home Office guidance alone is a suitable replacement for comprehensive training for officers determining firearms applications.
I have raised concerns about training because, like many people to whom I have spoken, I find it difficult to understand how, even with the old guidance that applied before December 2012, Mr Atherton, the shooter in the Horden case, was able to obtain and then retain his firearms; they were revoked for a period in 2006. The Home Office guidance states that consideration should be given to any of the following factors:
“Evidence of alcohol or drug abuse that may indicate that a person is unfit/unsuitable to possess a firearm due to the possible impairment of judgement and loss of self-control…Evidence of aggressive or anti-social behaviour, which may include domestic disputes…Evidence of disturbing and unusual behaviour of a kind which gives rise to well-founded fears about the future misuse of firearms. A pattern of abuse should generally be regarded more seriously than a single incident, although isolated incidents should not be disregarded in the assessment of the person concerned and their fitness to possess a firearm.”
From looking at the case, from talking to the family and the people involved and from looking at the coroner’s and Independent Police Complaints Commission reports, there was clear evidence to suggest that Mr Atherton was unsuitable to possess a firearm. I can detail the reasons.
Oral Answers to Questions
Roger Williams Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Will the Minister tell us what steps he is taking to ensure that consumers do not lose Freeview television reception as part of the 4G roll-out?
Transforming Rehabilitation
Roger Williams Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
I do not agree with Harry Fletcher. I am making sure that, when it comes to risk of harm to the public, that remains in the public sector and will continue to do so.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I pay tribute to the probation service for its work in my constituency, a very rural and sparsely populated area. What thought has the Secretary of State given to how these proposals will be carried out in such areas, which lack the presence of private sector and charitable organisations with the necessary skills to carry out rehabilitation?
Chris Grayling
The probation service in Wales has been one of the most innovative in doing this and has, in fact, in the past few months produced a blueprint on how this could happen in Wales, following a similar model to the one I have set out today. I fully expect to see members of the Wales probation team at the forefront of creating either mutuals or co-operatives to deliver the services. I pay tribute to the Wales probation trust, which is imaginative and innovative and has some great ideas to do precisely what my hon. Friend is talking about in difficult areas where communities in rural areas are spread out.
Oral Answers to Questions
Roger Williams Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Damian Green
I am enchanted to hear a pre-bid for additional public spending from a candidate, even before the election. The right hon. Gentleman is demonstrating his experience there. As I have just explained to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), we are seeking to increase the amount of money that the perpetrators of crime pass directly to the victims, through the victims surcharge, but it will be a matter for the individual police and crime commissioner—whether that will be the right hon. Gentleman or one of his opponents—to decide how best to spend that money in their local area. I am sure that he would agree that such decisions are better made locally than centrally.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
People are concerned that funding for Victim Support might be lost following the introduction of the new services, including that for mediation and conciliation. Does the Minister agree that those important services save the police a lot of time and resources?
Damian Green
I agree with my hon. Friend that mediation services do a very good job. He mentions Victim Support, which has, of course, asked all PCC candidates to sign up to five pledges. Many candidates of all parties—and, indeed, independent candidates—have signed up to those pledges. With the range of services involved, I repeat that it will be for the PCCs to make a decision, and they are best placed to do so in their individual areas.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Roger Williams Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
I am grateful to be able to speak to the amendment in my name and the names of my hon. Friends. The amendment is specifically about how the Bill affects Wales. In particular, it is about the relationship between the National Assembly for Wales, the Welsh Government and the British Government, and about the decision to hold the election for police commissioners in November.
When we last debated this, we talked about the so-called respect agenda, which respects the views, positions, functions and responsibilities of the devolved Administrations, Assemblies and Parliaments in the United Kingdom. The Minister touched on this in his speech when he rightly pointed out that the business of policing is not devolved—that it is still a reserved matter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who is sitting in front of me, agreed, when he was Home Secretary, that there should not be devolution of policing as we know it to the Welsh Assembly. However, 10 years of devolution have passed, and we now have a shared responsibility for matters that touch on police, crime and justice. Although the National Assembly for Wales does not have a specific responsibility for policing, the Minister knows that half the money that goes to police forces in Wales comes from the National Assembly, because local government in Wales is devolved. In addition, the Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government have functions and duties that are central to the operation of policing. The relationship between the Home Office, the Welsh Assembly Government and the National Assembly is therefore crucial. I fear that by continuing to push the Bill through both Houses, the Government will damage the relationship between Cardiff and London.
The Minister and the House will recall that, uniquely, the Welsh Assembly refused to give legislative consent to part 1 of the Bill. That is unprecedented. Similarly, because of the special relationship that the Welsh Assembly has to policing, the Culture and Communities Committee of the Assembly asked the Government to delay the implementation of police commissioners in Wales until it saw how the measure worked in England and could understand how it would affect Wales. That request was ignored.
Worse, the Government are now insisting on a November election in Wales without consulting the Welsh Assembly Government or the National Assembly. We have more elections in Wales, as we have had over the past year. We have had the referendum on extra powers, we have elections for the National Assembly and there are local government elections next year.
The Minister knows that the cost of the election for the whole of the United Kingdom, which was a matter of debate some hours ago, will be at least £25 million more than was expected. He says that that money would not necessarily have been spent on policing, but it could have been. He dismisses the additional £25 million on top of the £50 million that was already to be spent. One should compare that with what was said by the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who told the House not so very long ago—this is rather pertinent because of today’s and tomorrow’s news—that reducing the number of Members of this House of Commons by 50 will save £12 million. By changing the day of one election, that amount has been doubled overnight—so much for those predictions about money being saved.
Who on earth wants elections in November? All of us who have been involved in elections for too long to remember know that elections in November have disastrous turnouts. Add together the dark evenings and an electoral register still under discussion, and I would place a bet here in the House of Commons that the turnout for the elections for police commissioners will be rock bottom. Heaven only knows who might be elected on a low turnout.
The Minister and others talk about operational accountability. Of course Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State and Ministers do not tell the police what to do. When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and held responsibility for policing, I never told the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland what to do, although we would discuss it. However, can it be imagined that those who want to be elected on a very local level as police commissioner will not campaign on what are effectively operational issues? Add to that that the nuttiest people are likely to be elected if the turnout is low. That is a dangerous development that we face.
Our constituents simply will not understand how we can spend £25 million on changing the day of the election for police commissioners, £50 million on the elections themselves, and millions of pounds on administering the position of police commissioners, when over the next two years in Wales at least 800 police officers will get the sack.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will help me by spelling out the effect of his amendment. Would the Welsh Assembly not need to hold elections for police commissioners or would it still have a duty to select a date for the elections?