Steve McCabe
Main Page: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)Department Debates - View all Steve McCabe's debates with the Home Office
(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
I will make some progress before I give way to any other interventions.
Our reforms are also based on the premise that the police must be accountable not to civil servants in Whitehall, but to the communities that they serve. Last Thursday, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill completed its passage through the House. It is our hope that it will complete its passage through the Lords and receive Royal Assent in time for elections for police and crime commissioners to take place next year.
During the Committee stage of the Bill, the Opposition helpfully conceded the principle that we need democratic reform in policing, but their idea is just to add elections on top of the existing ineffective structures by having elected police authority chairs, which would add to the costs without bringing any of the benefits. Under our proposals, police and crime commissioners will have the power to set the police budget, determine local policing priorities and hold their chief constables to account. If they do not cut crime and help keep their communities safe, they will face the ultimate sanction of rejection at the ballot box.
However, slashing Labour’s bureaucracy and increasing accountability is not enough. The police will have to take their fair share of the cuts across Government to clear up Labour’s financial mess, so direct savings and efficiencies are also needed.
Mrs May
I am very happy to visit police forces, as I do, to talk to police officers across the board, and to hear directly what they are saying. When I next make a trip to the West Midlands force, I am very happy for the hon. Gentleman to arrange for me to meet those five officers. I am sure I will be meeting other officers as well.
It is important that we ensure that we make changes within our police force so that we have the police force that we need to face the 21st century, but it is also important that we make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent effectively. Our starting point for savings is the report by HMIC, “Valuing the Police” which estimated that £1.15 billion per year could be saved if only the least efficient forces brought themselves up to the average level of efficiency.
However, the fiscal deficit left by Labour is so dire that bringing all forces up to the average level is no longer enough—forces must go further. We must raise the performance of all our police forces up to the level not of the average, but of the most efficient forces. If forces improve productivity and adjust to the level of spend typical in the most efficient forces, we could add another £350 million to the £1.15 billion of savings that HMIC calculated.
This sort of thing is already happening. In Suffolk and Norfolk the police forces are creating a shared service platform for their back-office support functions, saving around £10 million per year. In Kent, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) who serves on the Kent police authority made clear, the police are streamlining and rationalising support services, enabling them to put more into the front line. The Kent force is also collaborating with Essex police to make savings and allow more resources to be devoted to the front line.
In London the Metropolitan police are getting more officers to patrol alone, rather than in pairs, and are better matching resources to demand in neighbourhood policing, increasing officer availability to the public by 25%. In Gloucestershire the police are putting 15% more sergeants and constables into visible policing roles and increasing the numbers of officers on the beat, at the same time as they are making savings. These examples show that it can be done and it must be done.
There were other aspects that were outside the remit of the HMIC report. I know that members of the Opposition Front-Bench team have not read everything that was in that report, so let me spell it out to them. HMIC did not look at the savings that could be made by joining up police procurement and IT, for example. Currently, the police have 2,000 different IT systems across the 43 forces, employing 5,000 staff. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) said, the police currently procure items from uniforms to helicopters in 43 different ways. That makes no sense.
Working with the police, we have already secured their agreement that the right way forward is a national, joined-up approach, with better contracts, more joint purchasing, a smaller number of different IT systems and greater private sector involvement. With these changes we can save a further £350 million. Again, that is over and above the savings that HMIC identified.
Mrs May
The other major item that HMIC did not look at was pay. In an organisation like the police, where £11 billion goes on pay, there is no question but that pay restraint and pay reform must form part of the package. That is why we believe, subject to any recommendations from the Police Negotiating Board, that there should be a two-year pay freeze in policing, just as there has been across the whole of the public sector. This would add at least another £350 million of savings to those calculated by HMIC.
All these savings, together with those identified by HMIC, give us £2.2 billion of savings, just over the £2.1 billion reduction in central Government grant that must be made. And even that ignores the contribution from the local precept.
Mrs May
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Our view is that it is important to get the balance right between what the centre does and what the local forces do. Of course we want to leave decision making with the local forces, but we are working with them and ensuring that they will collaborate on those aspects where it makes sense for them to do so in order to make the savings that enable them to reduce their budgets without affecting the front-line services that people want out there in the streets.
No Home Secretary wants to freeze or cut police officers’ pay packages, but with Labour’s record budget deficit these are extraordinary circumstances. That is why I commissioned Tom Winsor to undertake the most comprehensive review of police pay and conditions in more than 30 years—not because I want to make savings for their own sake, but because I want to protect police jobs and keep officers on the streets. We are doing everything we can to minimise the effect of the necessary spending reductions on pay. I have spelt out savings today, but we cannot avoid the fact that changes to pay and conditions have to be part of the package.
Steve McCabe
The Home Secretary is very generous. Following her comment on pay and trying to protect the police from the worst effects of the cuts, does she accept Winsor’s own comment that 40% of officers stand to lose as much as £4,000 a year as a result of the proposals she is putting forward?
Mrs May
Tom Winsor did not say that. He indicated that a percentage of officers could lose funding as a result of his proposals, which are about putting increased pay to those officers who are in front-line service or who are using certain specialist skills in their work. I want action on pay to be as fair as possible. We are determined not only to cut out waste and inefficiency, but to ensure that pay recognises and rewards front-line service and allows chief officers to put in place modern management practices.
The Opposition know that savings can and should be made by modernising police pay and conditions. Indeed, they have said so publicly. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford and the former Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), have both said that Labour planned savings in the police overtime budget, but when Tom Winsor proposed those savings they attacked them. I am sure that not only police officers and staff but the public would prefer us to look at pay and conditions rather than lose thousands of posts. Given that the Opposition do not support reform of pay and conditions, losing more posts is exactly what they would do.
Simon Hart
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Indeed, responsibility and irresponsibility lie at the heart of this debate. I cannot think of a more irresponsible approach than to try to frighten the most vulnerable in society, and the police service itself, with spurious claims that cannot be backed up by fact.
Steve McCabe
Does the hon. Gentleman think that the chief constable of Lancashire, who is the ACPO lead on performance management, was being irresponsible or misleading when he said on the “Today” programme on 29 March,
“we cannot leave the front line untouched and that is because of the scale of the cuts”?
Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman may also be interested in the comments of the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who said:
“I don’t think it’s possible to make a direct correlation between police numbers and crime reduction.”
It is being assumed that a reduced number of police officers means a reduced service. I would argue, as have chief constables across the land, including my own, that that is not as clear cut as the hon. Gentleman might suggest. In Dyfed Powys, there will be a different sort of policing as a consequence of these changes—it will look different, as I said last week. There will be a greater reliance on technology, and things will not be quite as they were before. However, it is irresponsible to suggest that the public are somehow endangered as a result, and that makes the motion something that the Opposition should be rather ashamed of.