Examination of witness (Questions 60 -
79)
TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2000
THE RT
HON MR
JACK STRAW
Chairman
60. They do not appeal, you are saying?
(Mr Straw) Most do appeal but most lose their appeals.
Mr Malins
61. You told me a fortnight ago that 654 appeals
had been heard and 16 were allowed, which means, presumably, 649
refused appeals.
(Mr Straw) Yes. In fact the number has now gone up.
62. Quite, but I am still looking for the letter
that relates to—
(Mr Straw) I hope you will take this instead of a
letter. 763 appeals have been heard at the latest date, 28 of
which have been allowed and the rest have been refused.
63. How many of that 720-odd left—
(Mr Straw) I have just told you—231.
64. What has happened to the other 500?
(Mr Straw) There are still in the United Kingdom and
we are taking enforcement action against them.
65. I am simply trying to get to the bottom
of this. You and I know that with tens of thousands of failed
asylum seekers at large in the country and, similarly, a backlog
of people with whom the Home Office has lost touch completely,
the chances of actually being removed is so low as to turn the
whole system into rather a mockery. Is that a fair judgment?
(Mr Straw) It is an unfair judgment, Mr Malins. It
was a fair judgment of your government, because they were allowing
the system to fall into disrepute and had cut the amount of staff
and cut the investment in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate
whilst the numbers were rising. Also they signed up to the Dublin
Convention which is the single factor which has made removals
more difficult than it was before. The mother and father of this
is the Dublin Convention which your government signed up to and
your government ensured was brought into force in October 1997.
What that has done—let us be quite clear about it—is
prevented us from removing people at the point where they make
an application, at the port—for example at Dover—before
we can send them back to France. Now we cannot, and it does not
lie in the mouth of any Conservative Member of Parliament to start
complaining about the problems with removals, given the fact that
it was your government who signed up to Dublin and we have been
lumbered with it.
66. You sound very prickly.
(Mr Straw) What we have also done is put £600
million—huge investment—into the new system, and hundreds
more staff into the system, including into removals, and that
additional staff will start to make a very significant difference
on the number of people being removed from this country. And,
let me say, we are also expanding the detention estate to increase
it to a total of 2,400 places. However, every time we try to get
a new detention centre established, of course, there are local
objections, and the very same people who have been saying "Lock
up these asylum seekers and send them back" jib at the means.
67. If you have only got round to sending away
200-odd out of whatever it is—1300—at Oakington, if
Oakington is not working how are you going to possibly get up
to 30,000 deportations in 2001/2? That is 600 a week, is it not?
(Mr Straw) It is a significant increase.
68. How are you going to do that?
(Mr Straw) By the way in which I have described—and
Oakington is working—to speed up the claims from those nationalities
which are likely to have unfounded applications. One of the consequences
of having Oakington there is that it has raised the game against,
for example, East Europeans. The number of people applying from
Eastern Europe has declined. It is also the case that in recent
months the number of people applying from countries where there
is unquestionably major civil turbulence and civil violence has
increased. These countries—like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia
and Sri Lanka -now account for the major proportion of the applicants,
along with a continuing problem from the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
69. Finally, Home Secretary, in relation to
those whose immigration appeals have failed all the way through
and who are at large in the country—not current ones but
at large in the country—and estimates vary from between
50,000 to 150,000, is this Government simply going to leave it
there or take any steps to find them and remove them?
(Mr Straw) We do take steps to find them and to remove
them. They are not entitled to benefits.
70. No state benefits at all? Education and
housing? Are you telling me I cannot find dozens of people who
are in this position who have got housing or other—
(Mr Straw) What I am telling you is that these people
who have no basis for staying here are not entitled to benefits.
They may have their children in school.
71. They have doctors, housing, etc.
(Mr Straw) Of course they have access to health care.
You cannot deny people—
Mr Winnick
72. Some would. Sitting on my right, some would.
(Mr Straw) Some might, but I am not proposing that.
Mr Malins
73. If they are not meant to be here we actually
should be saying to them "You should not be here, you must
go."
(Mr Straw) Of course we say that. We say that more
vocally and with more effect than the previous government. However,
we also have to acknowledge that if someone comes from a country
where there is huge civil disturbance and there may not be an
effective government there, as with, say, Somalia, simply trying
to make arrangements with that government to get them back—or
Sri Lanka, where there is an effective government but large parts
of the territory are under the control of opposition groups—is
very difficult. That, I am afraid, would be a verity whichever
government was in power.
Mr Howarth
74. Home Secretary, can we move on to the question
of police numbers and conditions. You have made it a key priority
not simply to maintain the number of police officers but to increase
them by 9,000, I think, over the next two or three years. The
fact is that most recent figures, up to March 2000, show that
there are something like 2,700 fewer police officers than there
were when you came into office. Can you let us have the latest
position as to the numbers of police officers there are? Secondly,
what are you really going to do to address a significant failure
in government?
(Mr Straw) I can certainly give you the latest figures.
I am trying to remember the latest provisional figures I have
seen for September, which were about 200 down on those for March,
and they are now bottoming out and starting to rise.
75. So the latest figure for March is—
(Mr Straw) For September. It is about 200 down on
what it was in March. I am happy, obviously, to give you the figures.
It is now levelling out. That is the important point.
76. What does that mean? You have more recent
figures than September to suggest that it is levelling out? On
what basis do you say it is levelling out?
(Mr Straw) Yes. Bear with me, Mr Howarth. These are
provisional returns. We will give them to the Committee as soon
as possible, but the brief I have here is that some returns are
still awaited from two services, but the total strength will be
213, I suspect, down as of 30 September compared with March. The
important point is that we are now turning the corner in terms
of police recruitment. It is very clear that in the vast majority
of police force areas—not all—recruitment is significantly
improving. Overall, the numbers will start to rise, as the Crime
Fighting Fund recruiting as well as basic recruiting kicks in.
You asked me some more general points about police numbers and
it is important to put these on the record. I gave no undertakings
at the election, or before it, about what would happen to police
numbers because I was aware of the lags involved in this and the
fact that police budgets had been squeezed by the previous government
from 1994/95 onwards. The budget set for 1997/98, which was set
in January 1997 before the election and which was earmarked by
the previous government for 1998/99, were tight ones, and we had
committed to maintaining that. Numbers have gone down, and I regret
the fact that numbers have gone down and, for example, the fact
that the cost of pensions is higher than anticipated. However,
once—and we did it very quickly—we identified there
was a problem new money was put into the system to turn things
round. The other point I would say is this: of course, it is the
case that if police services are acting at an optimum level then
more officers can help in the fight against crime. I have asked,
and I am happy to make it available to the Committee, for a detailed
analysis to be conducted comparing the performance of individual
police force areas against whether or not their police numbers
have risen or fallen. The suggestion is that it is in those areas
where police numbers have risen that there has been a reduction
in crime and in those areas where police numbers have fallen there
has been an increase in crime. In fact, there is no correlation
at all between these two—none whatever. Some of the forces
which have seen the best improvement in policing have had a reduction
in crime and some of them which have the worst performance have
had either the biggest increase in police numbers or improvement
in budgets. There is no correlation there. It goes back to this
issue of yes, we want to see more investment—and I do want
to see levels rise—but we also want to ensure that these
numbers are used effectively.
77. The fact, nevertheless, remains, Home Secretary,
however much you want to blame the asylum problems on the previous
government and however much you want to blame the lack of police
numbers on the previous government, that since 1998 you have been
setting the budget, you have been in charge and even on your own
admission to this Committee now, in the last six months the numbers
have still fallen. You have sought to reassure us by saying that
on the basis of figures which you are unable to give us you have
turned the corner, but the fact is, notwithstanding the increase
in the amount of money available and improved efficiencies, the
numbers of police officers are down. May I put it to you that
there are two problems: the first is that retention of existing
officers is a problem, and that one of the issues giving rise
to that is disillusion. I have been talking to Mr Norman Brennan
who, you will know, is the Director of the Victims of Crime Trust.
He said to me this morning that if there were a vote of confidence
in senior police officers in this country today it would be overwhelmingly
lost. There is deep disillusion within the police service, he
told me. I wonder what your comment is on that. Would you accept,
as I do (I expect you will not) that the MacPherson Report and
its wholesale condemnation of the police service in the Metropolis
has had a lot to do with reduction in police confidence?
(Mr Straw) No, I do not, and I am happy to deal with
that. First of all—
78. Tell us where the disillusion is coming
from, Home Secretary.
(Mr Straw) Overall, the police service is very pleased
about this record investment that is being made. In any service
and any group of people you will find some people who are happy
about their work and others who are less than happy, but it happens
that wastage inside the police service is remarkably low compared
with others in the wider public sector or in the private sector.
The overall wastage rate was 4.7 per cent in 1999/2000; it was
4.8 per cent in 1998/99 and I think it was 5.2 per cent in 1997/98,
under a budget set by my predecessors. CBI data from April this
year showed average wastage rate—this is including retirements—of
19.3 per cent as a whole, 15.7 per cent in the public sector generally
and 11.7 per cent in local government. The wastage rate for leavers
leaving for all reasons other than retirement last year totalled
just over 2,000 or 1.6 per cent of total police officer strength.
So there is a huge gap here between myth—people, yes, complaining—and
what actually is happening.
79. So it is a myth, and the Metropolitan Police
Commissioner Sir John Stevens is wrong to suggest that disillusion
is a factor, that poor pay is a factor and he is wrong to say
he is losing 120 officers a month and believes that the bottom
line is that we need another 2,700 police officers? He is wrong
about that?
(Mr Straw) There was a problem of pay inside the Metropolitan
Police Service, which I have dealt with, and the pay of Metropolitan
Police Officers—for those who were joining post-1994—has
been increased by over £3,000 over non-London officers of
£6,000[5].
For example, a good honours graduate coming into teaching in Inner
London, at the age of 22, will get £18,500. A new police
recruit aged from 18-and-a-half with 5 GCSEs Grades A-C, coming
into the London police service, will get £22,500. So it is
a good job on offer, and that has been recognised. As the Chairman
of the Police Federation was pointing out quite recently, most
of the recruitment problems inside the police service go back
to the Sheehy Report and the abolition of the housing allowance.
If I might just deal, Mr Howarth, with your important point about
MacPherson, I make no apologies whatever for setting up the MacPherson
Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, and I regard it as
one of the most important things I have done in my period as Home
Secretary. Yes, it made uncomfortable reading, yes, it requires
some police officers and some police services to change and it
requires them to change for the better. What happened to the Lawrence
family was utterly scandalous and completely unacceptable, and
it exposed deficiencies in the service both of inefficiency—and
that was a lot of it—and, also, to do—
5 Note by witness: From 1/7/00 London Allowance
for new recruits to the Metropolitan Police and City of London
Police was increased by £3227 to £4338 pa. This increase
is also paid to officers recruited since 1994 and not in receipt
of housing allowance. Officers in the Metropolitan and the City
Police also receive London Weighting of £1713 pa. London
Allowance and London weighting for a new recruit total £6051
pa. Back
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