Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-116)
17 SEPTEMBER 2003
DAVID BAINES,
RHYS GRIFFITHS,
PAUL TAYLOR
AND DEREK
CARTWRIGHT
Q100 Chairman: Or what about a bit
more pay?
Mr Baines: The relevant elements
in the Home Office have just brought in conditions now that say,
"If you demonstrate outstanding service you can pay up to
a certain amount of bonus". That is going to be focused towards
the operational officers, but it will also be run to cover community
beat officers who are totally effective and do that work because
they want to. We have also got response officers, block officers,
who are doing outstanding work, so it is about getting the balance
right.
Q101 Chairman: So they may be getting
more status but not more pay?
Mr Baines: I would not refuse
more pay across the board, thank you very much.
Q102 Chairman: Can I turn to the
Fire Service now? The Government is very keen that you increase
the amount of preventive work that you do. Do you see problems
in Oldham in getting this across? Have you any idea how many properties
have got effective smoke alarms, for instance?
Mr Griffiths: In terms of smoke
alarm ownership, 80 per cent of the county has smoke alarms. However,
research shows that in deprived arrears and ethnic minority households,
smoke alarm ownership is lower than this.
Q103 Chairman: What about Oldham?
Is Oldham better or worse?
Mr Griffiths: Oldham is worse
at the moment. We have just received a partnership grant with
the Oldham Borough Council for two million pounds to provide smoke
alarms in all local authority dwellings in Oldham, is 14,000 properties.
It is part of a brigade-wide campaign that Oldham has received
specific funding to do that. I have not got the figures on me,
unfortunately, to tell you exactly what they are at the moment.
Q104 Chairman: In trying to promote
the use of preventive measures does that also promote social cohesion?
If you are trying to get people more conscious about reducing
fire risk and preventive measures generally, in doing that work
is it a chance for you to encourage social cohesion?
Mr Griffiths: Absolutely.
Q105 Chairman: Can you give me an
example of how it works, that you are making people more aware
of the problems of fire and encouraging social cohesion?
Mr Griffiths: Some of the things
that Paul Taylor mentioned before that our community officer Jeff
Leach is doing with regard to working with youngsters on the "Team
Fire Experience" at Oldham Fire Station, for example, when
we bring in groups of youths from different areas, put them in
together, give them team building exercises, with fire safety
themes.
Q106 Chairman: Going back to the
police, in terms of the housing association's evidence we had
earlier, they would like to encourage more mixed communities.
Do you see that as feasible and something that you have a role
in trying to encourage, or do you see it as very difficult?
Mr Baines: We do have a role in
encouraging that process. Sad to say, the reality of where we
have to get engaged formally is either directly when we have a
complaint of racist behaviour or racist crime from somebody who
has moved into a community because of the difference in their
skin colour. That means that we have what I would like to call
a preferred service. We will put in extra cameras, we will address
the property as high priority so that it gets immediate response,
and all of it is to encourage and sustain first of all the individuals
to stay in that locality, and, secondly, we have a positive approach
to taking every line of inquiry to identify the potential offenders
and arresting them for any criminal offences. Equally, we then
bring in the community safety units and say, "We do not care
what it takes. We make this happen. We support it", because
to do otherwise breaches the very essence of trying to create
an environment where people can go about their work and business
and live in harmony with one another.
Q107 Chairman: And of the things
that you are responsible for is that one of those you think you
have succeeded with?
Mr Baines: We deal with the issues
when they are addressed to us. I think the wider issue of how
do you get people to engage and mix in a particular neighbourhood
is certainly one that is outside my remit. Probably the nearest
I have got to it is to create an environment where people feel
confident and safe to go and live within a community and feel
comfortable living within that community.
Q108 Mr Clelland: Could I ask about
the provision of each of the services in terms of reflecting the
needs of different communities, for instance, in interpretation
and translation services?
Mr Baines: There are two issues
for us. Obviously, we have some officers on the division who speak
Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi. Secondly, we run a language line so
that if people are either requiring policing services and have
difficulty in communicating effectively, or they have been arrested
and they need their rights and responsibilities explained to them,
the telephone goes into the Language Line which finds the relevant
dialect. Once we have cleared the initial requirements then we
identify appropriate interpreters to attend and support us in
doing whatever we need to do.
Mr Griffiths: The Fire Service
uses the same Language Line facility. Also, in terms of our recruitment
of a more diverse workforce to reflect the communities we serve,
we have made sure that we have a disproportionately high number
of females and ethnic minority firefighters working from Oldham
Fire Station across all watches. There is a good chance that if
the fire engine pulls up outside your house in Oldham there will
be either a black firefighter or a female firefighter, if not
both, getting off it. Also, in terms of career progression, we
have recently moved an Asian junior officer into Oldham.
Mr Cartwright: This seems to be
a common theme. We have put out an additional booklet and I can
show it to you in a second. An additional piece to that is that
we equipped all the ambulance staff and paramedics who work in
the communities with mobile phones and they can access the Language
Line via the mobile phone while they are in somebody's house.
You can imagine the difficulties in some cultures where a lady
might be giving birth to a child and there are men in the room,
so it is vital at that moment. We also have things like this booklet
where we can point to a particular phrase in English and then
look it up in a language from another cultural background for
particular conditions and communicate in that way. Further to
that, we have worked hard across Greater Manchester in removing
barriers to certain areas of the community to make sure that our
working population properly reflects that of the community we
serve so that there are more people in the Ambulance Service who
are from the community.
Q109 Chairman: As far as heart attacks
are concerned, the translation service is very good for other
things, but are you doing anything to identify households where
they have had one heart attack and they may have another and yet
their English language skills are fairly limited, so in summoning
help you need to get action pretty quickly?
Mr Cartwright: Across Greater
Manchester we do a lot of work in identifying medical conditions
especially in people who have been discharged so that we can identify
a house or a phone number or any address where a call comes in
from. Information appears on the computer screen relating to what
has happened there before the call taker then tells the paramedic
and passes on information about what has gone on there, whether
it be cardiac or whatever. Those cardiac initiatives, by the way,
are fully supported by the community responder schemes which are
designed to focus on cardiac conditions. Over a period of time
also across the Greater Manchester (and this work in Oldham as
well as any where else) we have what we call an inform scheme.
Where people have language difficulties we try to teach them specific
words, and it might well be "ambulance" to say three
times when they ring 999 and, it will where the individual is
registered present information to the call operator that this
person has a language difficulty; this is the condition that this
child has in this house for example; basically, the action will
be to mobilise an ambulance and inform the paramedics, so they
will be protected in that way.
Q110 Mr Clelland: The Race Relations
Act 2000 places a duty on your organisations not only to promote
racial equality and to eliminate racial discrimination but also
to promote good relations between ethnic minorities and other
communities. What effect is this having in your organisations?
Mr Cartwright: In our organisation
it is having a very positive effect. It is improving the culture
within the organisation, putting a richness to it. We have, as
I mentioned in the opening piece, employed a manager whose whole
job for the Ambulance Service is around racial equality and he
spends a lot of time in places like Oldham in the different areas
talking to the different ethnic groups and encouraging them to
get involved with things that are going on, not just in the Ambulance
Service but in the wider NHS. It is an interesting thing because
as greater awareness in cultural issues it is rolled in different
areas where the staff who work in those areas have suggested as
part of the race equality scheme the production of a manual to
give people a broader awareness of the different ethnic groupings.
There are real changes occurring among the staff in the area because
of the impact of employing a race equality manager, so it has
been very positive and I think the organisation is much better
for that.
Q111 Chris Mole: We want to touch
now on the progress you have been making with your workforce diversity.
How far have you got towards reflecting the communities that you
serve?
Mr Griffiths: Within the Fire
Service we have been running cultural awareness days and we have
removed barriers to recruitment by going to a rolling recruitment
programme. We now target recruitment advertising in local community
centres and minority publications such as the Asian News.
It is starting to have an effect. We have now got 35 firefighters
in Greater Manchester from black and ethnic minority groups.
Q112 Chairman: What proportion is
that?
Mr Griffiths: It is out of 2,200
so it is a very small percentage but you have got to start somewhere.
It has been running for the last few years.
Mr Taylor: In Oldham it represents
about ten per cent of the workforce.
Mr Cartwright: We have been doing
some work and it is interesting to hear that the different people
have mentioned removing barriers. The BEM is around seven per
cent across Greater Manchester but there is a greater percentage
in Oldham where there are larger ethnic groups. We have set some
targets to work to year on year and this year we are in advance
at something like 2.9 per cent across Greater Manchester. I cannot
give you the exact figures in Oldham. Our staffing in Oldham is
not the same size organisation as my colleagues but it will be
around 2.9 per cent and that is in advance of our target. If I
can just touch on the barriers, we have been quite progressive
in the way we have looked at this and I think we need to be bold
at times. I was contacted by our ethnic minority manager who talked
about understandings and beliefs in the ethnic community where
they were targeted by the police or other people—and this
links with what was said earlier—that they believed when
they were stopped when they were driving a car and they finished
up with three points on their licence that they were being treated
unfairly and in that way the establishment worked against them.
We were seen as the establishment too, so we took a step to analyse
what came in from recruits and if they have three points or they
have a minor offence of a criminal nature from a long time ago
we take that into proper consideration and make an individual
judgment around that which has helped dramatically, not just in
Oldham but across Greater Manchester. I think stances like that
have definitely shown us in a positive light in the community.
Mr Baines: Greater Manchester
started before the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 came in
and it was obviously following David Wilmot's[1]comment
about the force being institutionally racist as part of the Lawrence
inquiry. That instigated changes about the review of our selection
procedure and which aspects of that were less than inviting to
people from different ethnic backgrounds coming forward, so there
is a review of all that process. That has been reviewed again
since the Race Relations (Amendment) Act. What we have found is
that we are getting much more interest from people seeking a position
with the Greater Manchester Police or the Police Service both
as a police officer position or also support staff. It is right
to say that there are across the board figures of about 2.9 per
cent out of 6,900 where those figures related, although we are
recruiting additional staff now. In Oldham I have 12 officers
who have an ethnic minority background and that is out of 430.
It does not reflect the community and if I am being honest about
it I cannot see my divisional staff ever reflecting the community
in proportionate terms. More importantly, it is about ensuring
that the officers who do attend will be professional, competent
and deal with concerns regardless of colour and ethnicity. It
is about breaking down some of those barriers. One issue that
we have done that is really helping (and I have mentioned the
community safety officers on increase in Oldham)—and this
is nationally—is for a disproportionate number of ethnic
minority applicants to go into the PCSOs almost as a taster to
what the Police Service is really like.
Q113 Chairman: Is it working as a
taster?
Mr Baines: Yes, it is. We got
our first PCSOs about 12 months ago but, as people come in and
become more used to the job and the style of it, they are then
moving on to putting in a full application to join the service.
It is early days but certainly we are getting the interest in
the applications to coming in. For the 24 posts that we have advertised
we have had 80 applications, the majority from within the Oldham
area. I could not tell you what the breakdown is on an ethnicity
basis.
Q114 Chris Mole: What race equality
training is your service engaged in? Does that specifically focus
on community cohesion at all and how do you evaluate it?
Mr Baines: The Police Service
gives as part of its formal training to all officers as they come
in direct diversity training. The reality that we are trying to
get to here is joint training among our permanent race group peers
rather than via public and private sector agencies in Oldham so
that it is Oldham specific, so that we can sensitise our approach
to the relevant cultures that we deal with on a daily basis. We
are not there yet, but certainly there is agreed action to take
that forward and it is agreed in principle that that is the way
to take things forward for consistency, not just by the police
but by every other agency within Oldham.
Q115 Chris Mole: And the other services?
Mr Cartwright: We have a similar
scenario. We have awareness sessions on the basic training. We
have just finished the latest managerial training and every one
of the supervisory grades and above up to chief executive have
gone through an awareness session around the Act in particular
but also around the general aspects of racial equality. Just to
add to something that we mentioned a few moments ago, we have
a diversity committee which is chaired by a non-executive director.
We have talked about recruiting and how we are trying to improve
the numbers. Only this last week we identified that there were
a number of people from what we would consider black and ethnic
minority groups who dropped out. They actually said they were
going to attend and did not come to the first day of recruiting,
so we started to look at exceptions like that and then got back
in touch with individuals and spoke to them again to try and get
people who did not attend to come back. That was an important
step forward.
Mr Taylor: We started from a platform
of direct diversity training but, having reached the percentage
we have at Oldham, the watch environment in which these individuals
work is akin to a family group and difference does not exist in
family groups, so the acceptance and amalgamation is based on
the family environment.
Q116 Chairman: I wanted to ask you
an awkward question that we as a Committee should have asked you
that we have prepared for, but is there anything you would like
to say as a final comment to us?
Mr Baines: Can I raise an issue
about the media? The best thing that happened to Oldham for tension
was when a certain party got appointed elsewhere and so it took
away the media attention from Oldham, so there was no longer constant
reporting in the media just how bad it is, contrary to the view
of the people who live here; secondly, it took away all of the
people who were the anti-BNP or National Front, and they went
away to a different battleground and media attention followed,
so anything that in media terms puts Oldham as a negative, failing
place just re-ignites that story of failure, and there is a tremendous
amount of excellent work going on in this town. I will exclude
myself from the excellent work but it would be remiss of me not
to acknowledge the tremendous work and effort that is going on
around this town by the whole community.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that
comment. When we started the session I did put on record my thanks
to all the people who took us round yesterday and we did see some
problems but we did also see some very fine efforts that were
going on. I understand the difficulties that bad news gets reported
and good news is not worth reporting. Thank you very much.
1 David Wilmot is the former Chief Constable of Greater
Manchester Police Back
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