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Mr. Oaten: I am highlighting my concern about installing, on the basis of a low turnout, an individual with the power to take fundamentally important decisions. That is very different from a system based on an elected council comprising a large number of individuals.
Mr. Letwin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Oaten: I promised that I would not be like my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, so I shall take one last intervention.
Mr. Letwin: At least it demonstrates that the hon. Gentleman is saying something interesting, even if I do not agree with it. Is he proposing that the Liberal Democrat candidate for the mayoralty should not have the right to run London's police?
Mr. Oaten: No: my proposition is that in an area as large as London one can take reassurance from the electorates and the existing system. My nervousness is based on some of the trends and examples that have emerged, particularly in northern cities where difficulties have arisen after elections with very small turnouts. I am urging caution on those who advocate the establishment of a powerful new elected tier, such as a sheriff, in those areas.
Some of the Conservative proposals for the delegation of power and the reform of police authorities are not that different from the Liberal Democrat model. The structures and organisation of policing in England and Wales need to catch up with public expectation and the realities of crime and disorder, both locally and nationally.
Mr. Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Oaten: I want to finish, as I made a commitment to try not to speak for too long.
We already have a national police squad that deals with the most serious national and international crime and liaises with Interpol and Europol. There is an argument for reviewing and expanding its functions, perhaps merging it with the National Criminal Intelligence Service, Customs or special branch. The logic is that that new force should be accountable to the Home Secretary and an appropriate, more widely democratic authority along the lines of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. Alongside that body, there should be a common border force, as recommended by the Home Affairs Committee, to do away with the confusing alliance of police, immigration officers and Customs staff and to implement greater levels of security at our borders.
We will support Conservative Members in the Lobby because we believe that the thrust of their new ideas is worthy of further discussion, but I have grave concerns about their approach. We tabled our amendment because we believe that if the structure of local policing is up for review, the rest could be, too. It has been 40 years since the last royal commission on policing. Given the comments that have been made about the possibility of setting up a national police force, there can be no doubt that we need a serious debate on the issues. I urge hon. Members to move away from rhetoric and bidding wars and to take up the Home Secretary's offer to look seriously at ways in which we can improve an already very good police force.
5.54 pm
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): I shall try to be as brief as possible, because so far the debate has mainly been a conversation between Front Benchers, and it should be informed by the experience of more hon. Members. I note that although the motion makes great play of neighbourhood policing, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said little about the reality of neighbourhood policing on the ground. I would like to speak a little about that.
I do not want to wax lyrical on sheriffs. We could make a lot of mischief out of the use of the word "sheriff", but a posse of sheriffs—or even of John Waynes—would not make much difference in constituencies such as mine, which operate under so-called neighbourhood policing.
I am sad that the Liberal Democrats are going to join the Conservatives in the Lobby tonight, not least because, when the Government announced their initiatives yesterday on antisocial behaviour and low-level disorder—as I describe it—in communities, my local Lib Dem council immediately tried to upstage the Government by commenting that Liverpool city council was already geared up for getting rid of burnt-out cars within 48 hours. I had never heard of that service before. That breakdown in communication was underlined when I got one of my staff to try to speak to a real living person who could tell us something about the unit. My colleague spent the whole day trying, but failed to find anyone, and could see no mention anywhere in the council's indicators that it provided such a service. I am not saying that it does not, but the essential lesson is that it has to communicate to people the information about the services that it provides. That will be the gist of what I have to say about neighbourhood policing.
I am a firm admirer and supporter of the police in my authority who are trying to put neighbourhood policing into effect and stand second to no one in my admiration of the difficult work that the police do generally. I recognise that there have been great successes in neighbourhood policing in the Merseyside police authority area, as I am sure the Home Secretary and chief constable would agree. However, I want to talk about my constituency, which is a classic inner-city area.
The way neighbourhood policing works in my part of the world is that a number of local government wards are grouped together and a police resource allocation is then made to them, normally comprising about 30 constables, two sergeants and an inspector. In theory, the first point of contact is the inspector. That sounds quite a lot for a relatively small local government unit, but when we examine the situation in detail, we find that the officers work a shift system, so two thirds of them are not on duty at any one time. We also find that some people are away on training courses or holiday leave. We then discover that the numbers are made up with what I describe as ghost workers—people on long-term sick leave who have been allocated to a particular unit to effect neighbourhood policing, but who never appear because they are on permanent sick leave. That is grossly unfair to the officers who are trying to work in these under-staffed units. I have been out with them and seen the work that they do, and I recognise that they can only do so much in any given working day. It is also unfair to the communities that have a right to expect those units to do the job that has been allocated to them, namely neighbourhood policing.
The problems that result from all this are immense. First, there is a rotation of the people in charge of the teams, and in the composition of the teams themselves. By the time one person has got to know the community leaders in an area, they are moved on or promoted. There does not seem to be any consistency.
A second problem that I always encounter relates to priorities. I was interested to hear what the shadow Home Secretary said earlier about the operational autonomy of chief constables. Yes, chief constables and senior management can decide what their operational priorities should be. In my area, they have made a decision that the priority, certainly at weekends, should be to flood the city centre with police officers, and they do. It is a very safe city centre—so safe that the Duke of Westminster commented that he was happy when his daughters travelled from Eaton Hall to Liverpool, but not when they went out in Chester. That is his view.
Liverpool has a very safe city centre, but when all those officers are in the centre, they are not policing the neighbourhoods where people live. In those areas, one cannot get a response from the police. If one does, it is not followed through. The most repeated subject in my surgeries and postbag and on the telephone comes from people bedevilled by low-level disorder. What do I mean by that? I mean the vandalism that leads to burnt-out cars, gangs of scallywags on the streets making people's lives a misery and the archetypal neighbours from hell who appear to know no bounds when it comes to their irresponsibility towards their neighbours.
Mr. John Horam (Orpington): I can reinforce that point. I had cause to investigate a serious incident in Orpington, but found to my horror that because of a
police exercise in Kent and an exhibition at the dome there was only one policeman in the whole of Orpington to deal with antisocial behaviour.
Mr. Kilfoyle: That is a repeated problem; I hear the same story from colleagues around the House.
We all accept that the police must prioritise, but when we bandy police numbers around, do we know what a realistic figure is? I am sure that we could go from 40,000 to 100,000 without meeting the real demand. The professionalism and expertise of senior management in police forces is shown by how they manage their resources and how they grade, in an elastic and organic way, the priorities in their operational area at any given time.
I wish to give some examples of incidents in my area where I have tried to raise instances of antisocial behaviour and low-level, localised crime within the context of community policing. When I checked, I was horrified by the lack of response to alleged crimes that do not appear to have been investigated. I wrote to a senior officer on 7 July and pointed out a house that was being used to sell drugs, the telephone boxes used for drug drops, the registration numbers, makes and colour of the cars and the times at which they went back and forth. I described the concerns expressed to me by local residents. That was on 7 July; I have had no answer.
I wrote on 27 May to list allegations made by a woman, including assault, harassment, threats to kill, criminal damage, more common assault and burglary. I still have had no response. I am not saying that the police have not responded, but it would be nice to know that they have. I should like to liaise with my constituents and tell them that an incident is being followed up and action taken. That is not the case. It is not that we let these incidents lie; we try to elicit a response and fill the black hole in communication.
On 26 April, I raised the usual story: bunches of youngsters creating mayhem and damaging property. There was no answer. I can go back further, to 31 March, when I wrote about antisocial behaviour by youngsters. There was no answer. This is not about bureaucracy. I am asking someone to pick up the phone and let my constituents and me know that the police have taken cognisance of the comments and are attempting to make people's lives a little more tolerable by some sort of intervention.
On 27 March, I asked why scrambler bikes had not been confiscated. There was no answer. On 24 February, allegations were made—I kid you not, Mr. Deputy Speaker—of rape, siphoning off money and arson, yet still there is no answer as to what the police are doing in that case.
Incidentally, I issued a press release on Monday, not knowing of the announcement that was to be made by the Prime Minister. My view was very simple and the press release was headed, "Neighbourhood policing is not working."
I wish to give an example to the Conservative party, the "party of business", of what a business has to contend with when neighbourhood policing is not working. Mr. N. Harrison, the managing director of a small dairy that has been built up and now employs 30
of my constituents, wrote to me with a list of incidents. The following account sounds funny initially, but it is no laughing matter. He states:
- "The most recent event was on Saturday August 9th at 4.30 am. One of my drivers was out in his milk float and was followed by a car carrying 6 or 7 youths. At some point 2 of the youths got out of the car and got into the float either side of the driver. They forced him to drive all around the streets in the Oakfield Road area and would not let him out."
- "took control of the float and drove it into two telephone kiosks demolishing them. They then ran away."
- "We had no response whatsoever from the police, but they did take the time to contact BT to ask them to clear the site of the demolished kiosks. It is now . . . August 12".
- "I am having extreme difficulty recruiting staff".
A business is being threatened, individuals are being threatened, and residents' lives are being made a total misery—all under the aegis of neighbourhood policing, which I am told works. Forgive me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for being extremely doubtful about the efficacy of neighbourhood policing. As I understand it, it is not about the high-flown rhetoric of various Front Benchers but about trying to improve the lives of the people on the ground, who desperately need the police to intervene if there is to be any tangible improvement.
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