| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
1.29 pm
Mr. Stephen Pound (Ealing, North): I shall first refer briefly to the comments of the shadow Home Secretary, who was kind enough to mention Ealing. He referred to Northolt primary school and Walford high school in connection with closed circuit television. He also spoke about the CCTV programme in Ealing town centre. Sadly, Ealing town centre is not in my constituency: it is on the perimeter and falls within the area so ably represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra).
As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) said, the important point about CCTV programmes is that they are partnership schemes. I am as unhappy as he is about attempts to politicise partnerships between local authorities, businesses, including retailers, and local communities, which occur regardless of the political complexion of the borough. It is a shame that hon. Members descended to that level. Such partnerships are a point of pride for many London boroughs, and are at the heart of everything that the new Government are doing, as was shown by the statements by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
I support the police in our capital, and I am constantly grateful for and in awe of the extent of their commitment. I have read the "Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis 1996/97", which we have taken as our text for this morning. Anyone who has read it will recognise immediately the theme that runs right through it: the thin blue line of policing in London is becoming ever thinner. The resource implications delineated in the report are extremely worrying for Londoners. We read again and again of more being done with less. We could get away with that for one or two years, or even three, but the police cannot continue to do more with less without severe cracks appearing in the structure. Yesterday, I spoke to the Commissioner's office, and one of the expressions used was "the seams are now straining."
The report details extraordinary successes. Mention has already been made of the 12 per cent. reduction in burglaries in the period April to October, and of the 5 per cent. drop in street crime. I pay tribute to the officers in Operations Bumblebee and Eagle Eye, which have been so conspicuously successful in our capital city. One statistic that has not been mentioned is the 14,000 tonnes of high explosives that the Metropolitan police recovered in our capital city in the past year. Can hon. Members imagine the effect of 14,000 tonnes of high explosives had they remained in the hands of the terrorist agencies that had doubtless stored them?
Those successes have been achieved in the context of a reduction in staffing in the Metropolitan police service. The present Commissioner took over with a strength of 28,500 men and women. This year he commands 27,000, and we are on line for a figure of fewer than 26,000 next year. I have severe doubts about whether the present conspicuous successes of the Metropolitan police service can be maintained with falling staff numbers.
We recognise that resources are a problem in every aspect of government life. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) referred to Aneurin Bevan's claim that socialism is the language of priorities. In reality, everything is the language of priorities. We have inherited from the previous Government a crisis of funding across the board: in health, education, housing and pensions.
The issue of resources for the Metropolitan police is not just a funding crisis--it is a specific issue for London Members. The funding formula imbalance that penalises London must be addressed. If we, as London Members, achieve nothing else in this Parliament, let us please try to redress that injustice, right that wrong and correct the standard spending assessment formula which is crippling our police service in this capital city. We cannot allow it to continue.
One policing issue has been raised with me more often than any other during my many months as a Member of Parliament--the issue of tenure in the police force. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred to that, as did the Commissioner in the annual report, in relation to the management development strategy. The report refers to the wish in the Metropolitan police
An "interesting and varied career" is not how it is seen within the Met--quite the contrary. In Ealing, an extraordinarily successful police officer, who has co-ordinated the establishment of more than 150 neighbourhood watches in Ealing, has reached the end of her period of tenure and has been transferred to Hayes. I have nothing against Hayes and Harlington, but we want to keep her in Ealing.
Mr. McDonnell:
No transfer fee was involved in this process, I am assured.
Mr. Pound:
The officer moved to Hayes police station, rather than Hayes Town football club--despite Hayes Town's great success with Les Ferdinand and the10 per cent. sell-on deal.
We are losing established police officers who have earned the respect of their local communities. Many officers, against their wishes in many cases--I accept that some may wish to move--are being moved from the area in which they have established their credibility to another part of the city. I have severe doubts and worries about that.
Ealing is covered by two police stations--Southall and Ealing. Sadly, neither is in my constituency, but both are just over the border. I wish to follow the precedent by
paying tribute to Superintendent Mike Smythe, the divisional commander at Southall, Superintendent Geoff Bryden, the acting divisional commander at Ealing, and Superintendent Bill Troke-Thomas, who recently retired as divisional commander at Ealing and is now pursuing a career as a fine art expert and picture auctioneer.
One of the reasons for the tenure principle is that it is in the interests of the community and individual police officers. Senior officers have told me that it is a useful management tool to prevent individuals from becoming too complacent in their posts. It was mentioned on one occasion that it may also prevent corruption. If the only way in which we can gee up staff and prevent corruption is by moving them around the capital, that is poor management.
Mr. Greenway:
The hon. Gentleman may be aware that I was a Metropolitan police officer in the 1960s. I joined the West End Central police station within days of the ink being dry on the Challenor report. I think that everyone deeply regrets that episode in the history of the Metropolitan police. One of the recommendations of the Challenor report was that officers should not be retained overlong in one police district.
Mr. Pound:
I remember Sergeant Challenor well and I remember the documentation of the time. The hon. Gentleman is more knowledgeable in that area than I am, but I recall that that recommendation about moving officers applied to the CID and to specific sections within the Metropolitan police service. It did not apply to the entire uniformed force. We are not faced with a response to Challenor and West End Central: the matter affects every serving police officer and I am worried about that.
We sometimes hark back to a golden age of policing. Those of us who work in Norman Shaw South are in the old New Scotland Yard building, which is perhaps appropriate for old new Labour Members like me. Sometimes as we walk along the corridors of that building in which Crippen was interviewed, not, I am told, by the Whips but by the Commissioner of the day, perhaps we mentally clothe ourselves in trench coats and snap-brimmed trilbies. In our imagination we hear the silver bells on the black Wolseleys as they roar through Derby gate with Lockhart and Fabian who are there to protect the country.
I fondly remember as a young lad at Fulham football club seeing off-duty police officers standing at the Hammersmith end watching the silky skills and graceful play of Johnny Haynes and Tosh Chamberlain. I called my father's attention to the large number of officers at the Hammersmith end and he said to me, "Don't worry son, you are quite safe. They are all off duty." My father had recently had an unfortunate experience with a pound and a half of pork sausages. Meat rationing was still in force and he felt that he had been set up by the sausage squad. He subsequently changed his view of the local police. I do not know whether that was a mythical golden age, but I recollect police officers being part of the community. They knew one's parents and sometimes one's grandparents and, in time, they knew one's children. They were locally based, and those were the days before tenure.
"to ensure an equal distribution of resources, skills and experience throughout the MPS; and . . . to provide an interesting and varied career for both existing and potential MPS officers".
An "interesting and varied career" is a worthy aim, and I could understand it if that were the intention of the Met. That description could possibly be applied to the job of a Member of Parliament. I should like to put in a bid to be transferred to, say, Sedgefield in 10 years' time if the majority stays the same. If we are talking about being moved within the ranks, I would say that the Minister for Sport's job looks a little attractive to me. "Interesting and varied" though it would be, I am sure that none of us has any intention of trying to usurp your position, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We would not be so presumptuous.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |