Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
TUESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2004
BARONESS HENIG
OF LANCASTER,
LORD HARRIS
OF HARINGEY,
FIONNUALA GILL,
SIR IAN
BLAIR AND
GARY PUGH
Q80 David Winnick (in the Chair): You,
Sir Ian, what about the Met: do you believe that we are all ready
for the second phase or more caution?
Sir Ian Blair: No, I am very intent
that we should carry on into the second phase. I do not think
the first phase was enough. Many of the things that are in the
second phase are vital to improving the performance of the police
service as a whole and its standing with the community. Just to
take a single example, we really do need to simplify the performance
framework in the way in which it is being suggested in the public
sector agreements for the future we have at the moment too many
targets. I think that the way in which the PSAs are now being
set out gives a lot more local discretion, which is clearly both
the Government's intention and what we have been asking for.
Q81 David Winnick (in the Chair): Thank
you very much. If I can ask you, Sir Ian, in particular, about
crime statistics since 2001. The detection rate seems to be falling,
not increasing; is that not the position?
Sir Ian Blair: It would not be
the position in the Metropolitan Police service. The detection
rate has been reasonably steady since 2000, is now moving up reasonably
fast. I think it would be important, perhaps, for me to give a
little support and clarification about what Chris Fox either did
or did not say as reported in the newspapers. The clear requirement
for the police service is to reduce crime, and that has been the
requirement since the first Commissioners laid down the principles
of policing, that it was about the absence of crime and the maintenance
of public tranquillity first and the detection of offenders later
on. We see crime detection as part of, not separate from, but
part of crime reduction. I think it is very interesting that if
one talks to some of the US chiefs who are so familiar to this
debate, like Bill Bratton or Paul Evans, they do not talk about
detection rates at all. Some of the detection rates that we are
putting forward, like the Met's 97% detection rate for murder
is completely unheard of in the US. Some of our detection rates
are now dramatically advancing. Domestic violence, for instance,
moved up in the last year from 28% to 38% detection. Overall violent
figures: 24 to 31% detections. I do not feel that detections are
falling. Part of this, in the same way as the crime reduction
figures, is the impact of increased numbers. In the end, it is
the presence of police or the availability of police that will
determine the amount of crime and the amount of detections.
Q82 David Winnick (in the Chair): Sir
Ian, I am not suggesting for one moment you are putting a spin
on matters because, of course, spin would be totally unknown to
the Met, as it is of course to politicians, but in the figures
that I have there has, indeed, been a reduced rate as regards
detection. Are you denying that is, in fact, the position?
Sir Ian Blair: The figures that
I have show a broad sort of standardisation since 2000 and then
a significant increase in the last 12 months. There was a significant
fall from 1998 to 2000, a really quite significant fall, most
which was around the abandonment by the MPS at that stage of what
were described as "administrative detections".
Q83 David Winnick (in the Chair): We
do agree that there was a substantial reduction in the detection
rate between 1998 and 2001. That is not in dispute?
Sir Ian Blair: That is not in
dispute.
Q84 David Winnick (in the Chair): No
spin or anything else?
Sir Ian Blair: No.
Q85 David Winnick (in the Chair): You
totally agree that is so.
Sir Ian Blair: Your question was
2001.
Q86 David Winnick (in the Chair): Now
you are telling us that it has started to reverse.
Sir Ian Blair: It has started
to reverse, yes.
Q87 David Winnick (in the Chair): But
by no means as much as it should be. That is a question.
Sir Ian Blair: Again, that depends.
We all know that some of the detection processes in the past were
dubious; I do not mean they were illegal, but they were around
going to prisons and asking people which offences they were prepared
to admit to, and so on. There has certainly been a fall off which
has now again been reversed in offences taken into consideration.
The key figure is how many people are charged or summonsed and
then how many people are convicted in court, which is the offences
brought to justice target that the Government is setting. On that,
the Met, in common with other forces, is advancing.
Q88 David Winnick (in the Chair): Sir
Ian, I would put this to you. If there is a feeling amongst the
general public, justified or otherwise, but if there is a feeling
amongst the general public that a crime has been committed and
the likelihood, a burglary or some mugging or whatever is the
position, everyday life in our country has its dangers, and that
the chances of the person, the offender being caught, is rather
low, that of course inevitably the public feel that their confidence
that crime does not pay is not going to be so in practice?
Sir Ian Blair: I think that is
a very fair observation.
Q89 David Winnick (in the Chair): It
is stating the obvious.
Sir Ian Blair: Nothing that I
have said is that detections are not important, but it does seem
that we have to make sure that we see detections as a subset of
crime reduction and public reassurance because we are now in London
at a 30 year low in burglary, to take the example you have used.
That means thousands of people every month are not burgled in
the same numbers as they would have been before. That is clearly
a clue to public reassurance. At the same time, we have to make
clear to criminals that they will be caught, and the figures,
as you describe it, are not good enough yet, but again the
concentration that we are now undertaking around priority offenders,
looking at the moment at prolific offenders and taking them out
of the system I think is another part of this process, as is the
work that Gary Pugh, who I should have introduced earlier, our
Director of Forensic Science, is doing around DNA and forensic
technology.
Q90 David Winnick (in the Chair): What
is your response to the attitude of the average person, law abiding
person, who would say: "If only we could see more police
around the place. We see them so rarely and when they do come
around it is in a patrol car".
Sir Ian Blair: My response to
that would be that in London they are seeing more than they have
ever seen them before; we have statistics that back that up. Our
safer neighbourhood teams are receiving really significant public
approbation. We have had them evaluated in Camden in particular,
by the University of Portsmouth. As the safer neighbourhoods teams
roll out across all of the boroughs of London we will have individual
evaluations of public perception before they arrive and after
they arrive. We are seeing very, very significant levels of public
recognition of these teams.
Q91 David Winnick (in the Chair): I
certainly want no special protection for myself, and I am not
going to mention the tube station in question, but when I do arrive
at the tube station from work from Westminster, over the years
from the tube station going home I cannot recall seeing a police
officer. If I cannot recall, the sort of time we finish our work
here, then obviously I can only assume that there are not plenty
of police officers except at that particular time when I am going
home. The point I am making: it is not a question of protection
for any Member of Parliament. It is the fact that the public are
unlikely to have seen anybody. I suppose to some extent it is
also the same in my own constituency.
Sir Ian Blair: I would certainly
recognise the picture that you have described. I would not recognise
it so much now. The Met has grown in strength from 25,000 to nearly
31,000 officers plus 2000 community support officers. That is
still a low figure by European standards, but it is a very significant
increase. I was just turning to the Camden evaluation. Of the
people polled by the University of Portsmouth 70% saw these teams
as increasing their feeling of personal safety by day and by night.
That is the clue. I think it is fair, and I have made this point
in a number of speeches over the recent years, that both the commentators
and the police service lost sight of the significance of patrol.
There was this famous statistic that the patrolling police officer
only came across a burglar every 30 years so why did you bother
to patrol. What we failed to understand was the significance
of the presence being the reassurance. That is why across the
Met and across the rest of the country we will start to roll out
these teams, dedicated teams to every neighbourhood. It is putting
neighbourhood policing back.
Q92 David Winnick (in the Chair): It
is a credit to the Met and the police force outside London that
people have such confidence that they want to see police officers
and that should not at any time be forgotten or the way in which
police officers lives can be at risk as we know from some of the
terrible things that have taken place in the last few years. Thank
you, Sir Ian. Do you, Lady Henig or Lord Harris, as the case may
be, have any comments on the rate of detection?
Baroness Henig of Lancaster: Can
I say, one of the roles of police authorities is to raise precisely
the questions you have been putting to Sir Ian Blair with their
own forces. This is an area that police authority members take
a lot of interest in. One thing that has struck me, and Sir Ian
did touch on this, is that detection rates for serious crimes
are high. Detection rates for murder are something like 90%, violence
against the person 50%, which we welcome clearly. The problem
appears to lie in areas where there is a much more diffuse range
of crimes: criminal damage, petty theft. I think the new way in
which crime is recorded has actually affected detection rates.
We are now recording much more rigorously all the low level crime,
which is actually the most difficult to detect. That area is one
that the police authorities are trying to get a handle on and
are in dialogue with their police forces for precisely the reasons
you have put forward because the public are asking these questions.
David Winnick (in the Chair): They are,
indeed. Thank you, Lady Henig. I am going to turn to my colleague,
Mrs Janet Dean, to ask a number of questions. I said at the beginning
we are going to have a vote at 4.00. We probably will not be able
to finish at 4.00, but to the extent—I may be as guilty
as anyone else—if we keep our questions brief and answers
brief we will get through a lot more. Thank you very much, Mrs
Dean.
Q93 Mrs Dean: Thank you, Chairman.
Baroness Henig, could you say what experience you have of the
work of the Police Standards Unit and the national centre for
policing excellence, and how effective do you believe they have
been?
Baroness Henig of Lancaster: Thank
you for that question. If I start at the beginning, there was
some uncertainty amongst many members in the service around the
role of the PSU and how it would differ perhaps from HMIC. I have
to say that has now settled down. I think there is a good understanding
now of the respective roles and responsibilities of the PSU as
opposed to other bodies. We did say in our written evidence we
actually believe that the standards unit has had a major impact
in terms of galvanising focus on performance. One of the reasons
I say that, and again I say it as a Police Authority member, and
I am very pleased that the standards unit has helped to develop
some really valuable tools which have been of great benefit to
us. I am thinking of tools such as i-Quanta. PPAF, Policing Performance
Assessment Framework, activity based costing. These are methodologies
that Police Authorities can actually use to test performance,
performance management, in their own forces. To that extent, we
feel that the standards unit has actually brought a rigour into
that area and has helped us considerably in the role that we carry
out across the country. I am not sure the same impetus would have
been there to get on and deliver without the PSU. Again, an area,
just if I can briefly say, an area where there has been some difficulty,
one has to acknowledge this, is over intervention and target forces,
which certainly caused some sensitivities to begin with. Again,
although the involvement to begin with was a bit ad hoc we
now have an agreed protocol about how and when the standards unit
engages with forces. That has brought greater clarity and it recognises
the need to involve police authorities and we are much happier
now with the way the system works.
Q94 Mrs Dean: Do you have concerns
about any significant problem of overlap between not only the
PSU and the national centre, but the central Home Office, ACPO
and HMI and the constabulary?
Baroness Henig of Lancaster: It
is a crowded field. One has to be clear there are number of bodies
at central level, but nonetheless, I think that there is a lot
of hard work going on amongst different agencies. Where there
are areas of duplication one of our jobs, certainly at national
level is to make representations about that and to try and get
clarification and streamlining. I recognise your concerns and
it is an area that we are constantly looking at and trying to
work to bring clarity.
Q95 Mrs Dean: Sir Ian, do you have
anything to add to that?
Sir Ian Blair: I probably do,
but only by taking that question on into the suggested national
police improvement agency; if you are happy for me to do that,
because that in a way is where PSU meets HMIC, meets everything
else, is going.
Q96 Mrs Dean: Yes.
Sir Ian Blair: There has been
a level of overlap and think what is coming out of debate about
the improvement agency is clarity about at least two functions
that do not sit in an improvement agency and have to continue.
One is inspection. The way in which HMIC is now developing
the baseline inspection across forces for both in terms of performance
and strategy is a very helpful process. That is saying to the
public: this is what your police force is like. Then there is
something about supporting forces or individual BCUs whose performance
is well behind the rest. That is a specific action by PSU which
is not always going to be fully comfortable but I think is a necessary
process. Beyond that, it seems to me there is something around
setting a much more clear set of doctrine for the police service
and then enabling forces to have the capacity to deal with it.
That is where the improvement agency comes in. Where ACPO, and
to some extent the APA has started to struggle over the last few
years has been the capacity to undertake fundamental, measured
improvement while also doing the day job. I think we need to look
across to the experiences of Local Government and NHS in setting
up some kind of agency that assists. That is why the bit about
the PSU cannot be in it. If the bit about where there is a kind
of governmental enforcement bit, then I think individual forces
will lose confidence in bringing in an improvement agency. I am
very hopeful that this will settle something that has for too
long been done on goodwill.
Q97 Mrs Dean: Thank you. Baroness
Henig, you also support the creation of the national improvement
agency. Do you want to tell us why you support that?
Baroness Henig of Lancaster: I
support the principle. What is very important for the APA is to
be absolutely clear about the role and terms of reference of yet
another new body, so there is not overlap or duplication of the
sort you have already alluded to. We certainly see scope for and
would welcome some rationalisation of the existing landscape that
is rather crowded at the moment. The way we are looking at the
improvement agency, it may not be necessarily the exactly same
way that ACPO is looking at it. What we would like to see is a
peer review body, something along the lines of the IDEA, which
is made up of respected practitioners from forces and authorities
who can go out and spread good practice on the ground and bring
about a self-improvement culture. We do not want it to be a monitoring
or regulatory or enforcement body. We want to see HMI continue
as the independent inspectorate. Like Sir Ian, we very much welcome
their baseline assessment. I thought that was absolutely the way
forward. For us, it is a peer review body which we think would
be extremely useful, but even more crucial than that we think
there has to be genuine tripartite ownership of the agency. It
has to be an agency in which the APA and ACPO as well as the Home
Office feels some ownership because otherwise we feel it will
not succeed and get service buy-in. It must not be seen as just
another arm of the Home Office. Anything that would encourage
ministers to let go a little and trust us to get on and run it
would be very much welcomed.
Q98 Mrs Dean: ACPO argues that the
police training organisation Centrex should not have been given
responsibility for operating the national centre for policing
excellence. What is your opinion?
Baroness Henig of Lancaster: I
think that NCPE does have the potential to have a significant
impact on the way communities are policed. The thing about Centrex
is that when NCPE is part of it, it is actually governed then
by tripartite governance. Again, I come back to that principle,
that is something that we very much set store on. We do want to
have an input into that to be able to have ownership over the
work it is doing. That is where we are coming from on that one.
Q99 Mrs Dean: Thank you for that.
Can I turn to you again, Sir Ian. Your memorandum criticises other
bodies, such as the Court Service, for showing a lack of urgency
in development of a performance culture. Can you give concrete
examples of this and how it impacts on the work of the police?
Sir Ian Blair: Yes. I hope it
is not so much a criticism as a hope for improvement. I categorise
the other agencies into two parts. You have the criminal justice
agencies and then you have the local authorities. In the criminal
justice agencies, there is a long history of IT under provision,
you know that. There is also a considerable amount of cultural
resistance. In that, I take the single example of court results.
There have been recommendations for the Audit Commission and others
for about 15 years that the results from courts should be sent
directly from the court to the national criminal record office;
that has never been achieved. At the moment, those results are
then sent back to the police officer whose responsibility it is
then to inform the criminal record office. The difficulty is,
in these days, the police officer is very often not in court himself
or herself. It is a very, very laborious process. Another group,
the Crown Prosecution Service: again, a long history of IT under
provision. We are now moving through the case and custody process
so that the case process will be prepared electronically, but
at the current time the CPS requires original documents. We have
to get away from that process for decision making. I am not saying
without original documents for a trial, but for decision making
we should be able to see where there is enough evidence on the
screen of a computer. There is quite a long way to go in that.
There are considerable difficulties I think for probation, particularly
in London, to bring together its IT processes. There are currently
four areas. They are not joined up in terms of IT provision. I
see this in a body that I sit on called The London Crime Reduction
Delivery Board where we were particularly trying to follow the
issue of diversity through the criminal process, and it was effectively
only that that could come up with the answers as opposed
to the other bodies. That is a disappointment, but I think we
are moving in a much more coherent way than ever before. In terms
of other agencies, we have with education authorities and health
and housing there is a long way to go before I think they see
that as part of a community safety effort. There are individual
boroughs where that is working well, but a lot of the time there
remains a cultural reluctance around information sharing. I think
there are some very good future prospects. The work being done
by ODPM around local area agreements, the concept of public services
boards, at the moment being piloted in Hammersmith and Fulham
for instance, brings all the agencies together with a pot of money
and then starts to make that local accountability possible. I
think one of the things I would particularly look for the future,
in addition to the joint funding process, which is always a difficult
set of cats to bring together, is some kind of joint inspectoral
process, some way in which the HMIC can inspect the contribution
of other agencies, or we could have a community safety inspectorate
or something of that nature bringing all that together because
the undoubted thrust—and we will get on to accountability
in a minute—the undoubted thrust is below that level. It
is at the neighbourhood meeting level, you will all know that
as MPs. Getting all the agencies to agree to be held accountable
at that level is very difficult. To give you one concrete example
is the new dispersal orders in relation to crack houses. We are
doing well in London, but the variation between contribution by
one borough and another is quite extreme. That is about getting,
if you like, their act together in that field.
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