Written evidence from the Home Office
is printed on Page Ev 308
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 250-259)
24 NOVEMBER 2004
Mr Stephen Rimmer, Ms Louise Casey, and Ms Margaret
O'Mara
Q250 Chairman: Welcome to the Committee.
As you know, today we are looking at policing in Wales. Would
you introduce yourselves? Perhaps we could start with Margaret
O'Mara and work along. Say who you are and what you do for the
record please.
Ms O'Mara: I am
Margaret O'Mara and I am the Director of Crime Reduction in the
Home Office.
Ms Casey: My name is Louise Casey
and I am the National Director of the Government's Anti-Social
Behaviour Unit which is in the Home Office.
Mr Rimmer: Good Afternoon, I am
Stephen Rimmer and I am Director of Policing Policy in the Home
Office, responsible essentially for all police issues within the
department.
Q251 Chairman: The questions are probably
going to be addressed to you in the first instance, Mr Rimmer.
We have just had that published today. You will not be surprised
to know that we have not read it yet, but we do have policy issues.
Could you tell us what the key drivers are of the present policing
policy?
Mr Rimmer: The national policing
plan which has come out today and the White Paper which you will
have seen on police reform which came out two weeks ago form very
much the drivers for the development of police service in England
and Wales. The plan is an attempt at identifying the relationship
between stated national priorities and local delivery through
43 forces and authorities and it has been refined in its third
year now from being, what many observers felt in its first year
was a rather top-heavy and over-prescriptive set of requirements
on the police service, into one which makes much more explicit
the relationship between national standards and local flexibility
and local priorities. That is very much as well the driver behind
the White Paper. As you will be aware, the focus there is
on neighbourhood policing in particular and I am sure you will
want to come back on that. The emphasis is on the need to focus
on the citizen at point of delivery and for the support structures
above the front-line police service to be geared towards enabling
that delivery to be as accessible and responsive as possible,
to connect up the locally-geared policing that this government
is keen to see develop further, but recognising the complexities
around serious and organised crime and indeed, the counter-terrorism
effort which require resources and structures at a force level,
at a regional level and national level.
Q252 Chairman: In light of the fact that
we have not been able to look at this, can you give us some idea
of how you are going to retrieve this flexibility and the balance
between national and local priorities?
Mr Rimmer: First of all, on the
priorities themselves it is worth stressing that the government
does not just pluck them out of thin air. There is a detailed
consultation process with forces and authorities and other stakeholders
and also increasingly links into ACPO's national strategic assessment.
I think you have heard a bit about their work in terms of identifying
through that assessment priorities and needs that derive from
local intelligence systems. So the priorities themselves, and
ministers are always very keen to stress this, are not out of
the clear blue sky, dumped on local forces and authorities, they
are priorities precisely because, in the government's view, they
connect to the needs and the concerns of local people. I will
not dwell in any great detail on them, but just to give you a
flavour, they are focused on reducing overall crime, on providing
a citizen focused police service, on improving detection rates,
which has been a particular performance issue for some time, on
reducing concerns about crime and anti-social behaviour and on
combating serious and organised crime. Alongside that, there are
some national requirements around counter terrorism as well, but
those are the five priorities. Now, what this plan says, I think,
and certainly ministers intend to say more clearly than in the
previous two plans is, okay those are the five key priorities
and we have an accountability framework to deliver against those
priorities and to assess your own performance as an individual
force and authority against them, but we much more explicitly
build into the planning and performance management framework that
this plan sets out some capability for forces to develop their
own local priorities on top of those national priorities. Indeed,
even within the performance framework, which is set out in the
plan, much more explicit scope is given for local priorities.
The government is very clear that in some parts of the country,
those priorities will be very different from others. Indeed they
may vary within forces from one BCU to another. Of course there
is a question which the plan cannot answer, because it is not
that sort of document, which is: what is the capacity that forces
have to deliver local priorities over and above the national priorities?
We recognise that there will continue to be a debate around that
with forces and authorities and that some will feel that they
have relatively little room for manoeuvre potentially to do more
than the priorities themselves. There is no doubt that if you
link those expectations in the plan to the requirements in the
White Paper about neighbourhood policing being above all focused
on the needs of the public, to be successful at neighbourhood
policing clearly requires being locally responsive and this government
acknowledges that. In a particular context, it relates to Margaret's
responsibilities around crime. A very powerful signal about that
is that the crime target is now a much broader one, it is around
overall crime, not specified in terms of the previous regime which
focused purely on vehicle crime, robbery and burglary. There is
an explicit acknowledgement within the plan that it is for police
authorities, particularly, in concert with forces, with government
offices, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) and
others, to work through the best way of hitting that target in
a way that meets local priorities as well as national ones.
Q253 Chairman: I think you may have partly
answered the question I am going to ask now or expanding on a
criticism which is often made about national policing policy being
set basically by the agenda of cities and urban areas and perhaps
not taking into account the rural problems, particularly those
we have in Wales, for example. I wonder if you could perhaps suggest
what is different in this plan that would allow our kind of police
forces to tackle rural crime rather than the urban priorities.
Mr Rimmer: I shall not repeat
what I have just said but there is an explicit recognition about
the need properly to reflect local priorities. There is certainly,
alongside that, a recognition from Home Office ministers that
rural areas can be as concerned about some of the issues around
national priorities, not least anti-social behaviour as any other
part of the country, but there are clearly issues which will relate
to particular communities which ministers are quite clear that
local plans need to reflect beyond the national requirements.
It was obviously a purposeful move to incorporate within this
plan for instance, an acknowledgement that there would be work
for forces in taking forward the Hunting Act. That clearly is
going to affect some rural forces, no doubt in Wales as well as
in England, to a significant degree. What I like to think force
authorities find helpful about the plan is that although it does
not throw everything into the kitchen sink, as it were, in terms
of saying you have to do a combination of all these things to
be an efficient and effective force, by flagging up some of the
particular issues outside the key priorities, what it is really
saying to forces and authorities is that we know that some of
these issues, and indeed some that may not be mentioned in here
at all, are actually in local terms very important because of
particular communities, rural and other, and we want to ensure
that you respond effectively to those. Those are not just fine
words, because in a sense the performance framework and the reform
White Paper puts much, much more centre stage, and I think this
is quite significant in way policing has developed in England
and Wales, much more centre stage alongside quantifiable data
around crime reduction, the whole reassurance and citizen focus
agenda in measurable ways, so that you cannot now in effect, be
in a fully efficient and effective police force, if you are not
responding to the needs of your communities as assessed through
that framework alongside reducing crime. Obviously government
wants both elements, but I think there was a legitimate criticism
of earlier regimes that they tended just to focus on the easier
to measure crime reduction elements and ignored the fact that
policing is about relationships with the community.
Q254 Chairman: And reassurance.
Mr Rimmer: Yes.
Q255 Chairman: One of the problems that
we heard expressed, not so much by the police, who may be buttoning
their lip about it, was that a lot of initiatives are coming forward
which sometimes can be seen to be contradictory, maybe not in
their effect but in their operation. I wondered whether you had
anything to say about that.
Mr Rimmer: I would see that in
two ways and there be other dimensions. Margaret will have views
on this as well because it impacts on their responsibilities.
As far as the Home Office itself is concerned, there is an
increasingly strong recognition to be more joined up about its
requirements on the police service. I think there was a risk,
this is my view, I do not think ministers have said this but it
is certainly my view, that under the old PSA regime, where some
very specific targets were required by different parts of the
Home Office, those different parts of the Home Office in engaging
with the police service tended to say "We're not interested
in what else you're doing, what other pressures you've got, just
get on and deliver" whether it was street crime or offences
brought to justice or whatever. I think there is a much stronger
recognition within the Home Office now that these things have
to join up in a coherent way for forces and authorities to be
able to deliver them and that we must not send mixed messages.
I am sure we still do send mixed messages from time to time, but
we are much more conscious of the need to avoid that, not least
through the new mechanism we have, so-called delivery managers,
which are based out there in the real world, currently only in
four cities but the aim is to expand that over time, precisely
to bring back to the Home Office the realities of different funding
streams, different initiatives, different requirements and ensure
that they are brought together much more coherently. So that is
at one level. At the broader government level, there is still
a major challenge about how government across the peace engages
with the police and other key partners. Very deliberately, we
have emphasised the importance in this context of the plans for
local area agreements which were inspired by ODPM, but the Home
Office is a very enthusiastic partner in that because we totally
accept that for the police and other crime reduction agencies
it can be a very bewildering landscape. This year's plan at least
starts a process of requiring forces and authorities to link up
their targets, particularly through government offices for the
regions, with other partnership bodies. In previous years we did
not even start to attempt to make that link and therefore I know
some chiefs felt they were genuinely pushed in different directions.
I do not think ministers would claim that we have got all of that
properly synthesised yet in terms of how it all comes together,
but we are much more conscious about it and we are engaging with
police forces and others to make sense of it as far as possible
in a much more structured and transparent way than we have ever
done before.
Ms Casey: I used to work in the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and then moved 18 months ago
to the Home Office. One of the most significant developments is
actually the stronger and safer the communities fund which is,
as Stephen outlined, a sort of joint pot between two government
departments and that is a fairly significant thing. The organisation
of that across two Whitehall departments of their size is significant.
There is a tremendous amount of commitment, certainly at ministerial
and official level, to make sure that the experience of crime
and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) or community safety
partnerships (CSPs) is actually a much more positive one which
actually all links together. So what you have is a kind of the
police reform White Paper and the police service moving towards
citizen-focused policing, what you have is the local government
side, through things like the comprehensive performance assessment,
looking much more at how people respond to safety, respond to
those sorts of issues like anti-social behaviour, but also crime
reduction and then what we now have is a mechanism around funding
which did not exist before, which is the safer communities pot,
as I call it, the safer and stronger communities fund. There are
certainly elements which are moving in the right direction. The
job is for people always to be pushed to be better, but that is
quite a significant move.
Q256 Mrs Williams: The anti-social behaviour
action plan and the TOGETHER campaign are just over 12 months'
old now, so you will not be surprised to hear me asking questions
about the anti-social behaviour action plan and how it has developed.
Do you think high numbers of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs)
reflect success or failure of strategy in tackling anti-social
behaviour?
Ms Casey: We are essentially one
year into the launch of the TOGETHER campaign and anti-social
behaviour orders, as the one-year-on document says, and the whole
TOGETHER campaign are around trying to get people to tackle anti-social
behaviour and not tolerate it. There is the desire of a housing
officer to walk away from a rent arrears case and call it rent
arrears, when it is actually about somebody behaving anti-socially
and being a neighbour from hell, to use the jargon, or an environmental
health officer just dealing with cleaning up constantly and not
actually tackling the behaviour that is causing the rubbish to
be put there constantly, or a community safety partnership worrying
about gating and target hardening rather than the behaviour of
the people who are actually causing all the problems. We have
been operating in a context for the last 12 months which is quite
radical and quite new and getting people to look at how, at a
cultural level, you come at this from a scenario where all of
those different people actually think about how they tackle this
problem, how they tackle behaviour and then within that I actually
think the growth in the number of ASBOs is incredibly heartening.
You guys put these things through Parliament so you must hope
somebody out there actually uses them. Forgive me, I was told
not to be controversial or say anything funny at any point and
I have already stepped out of order and you are taking notes.
Essentially what we have seen over the last 12 months is a massive
upsurge in the use of powers, but I think what that reflects really
for me is a kind of sense that actually out there things can be
done. There is an example in the Rhondda actually where nine times
out of ten, they have solved the anti-social behaviour problems
which come before them as a community safety partnership by actually
visiting, warning and confronting the families and individuals
behaving in a way, so they end up with ASBOs, if necessary, at
the end of a line and that is really what I am interested
in. What the TOGETHER campaign is about is how much action you
can take to do this. Of course I am pleased that the number of
anti-social behaviour orders has increased because I genuinely
thought that there were not enough out there and I have been to
too many community meetings where they had had enough, I have
met too many members of the public whose lives are a total misery
and I thought action needed to be taken to make sure that this
behaviour was brought under control. However, it is one of many
tools really and I think it is one of an overall strategy locally
which is around the fact that culturally we should not let the
public have to put up with this as much as they have done. This
has been driven very much by the public, MPs and local authority
councillors; really that has been what has been pushing this entire
campaign. I see that the number of these powers, and I have brought
by favourite report with me which I hope you have seen, actually
does reflect the massive upsurge in activity, which can only be
a good thing, because frankly there just was not enough before.
Q257 Mrs Williams: The Home Office is
of course working towards an integrated approach to anti-social
behaviour and that is firmly linked with the civil renewal and
regeneration agenda, as we know. Can you give us more detailed
examples of success in this area, both in terms of internal co-operation
within the Home Office, amongst the different units, and inter-departmental
strategies across Whitehall really?
Ms Casey: I will deal with regeneration
first. I think this is quite an interesting one and it is very
interesting to me that very recently I was in Redcar—I know
it is not in Wales but it is the one which is at the top of my
mind—and this particular estate must have had every single
regeneration initiative available to it over however many years,
city challenge, single SRB, now we are in neighbourhood renewal.
I got there on a very wet miserable day and the woman who runs
the corner shop takes me out into the middle of this particular
estate where the new build which has just been created is already
abandoned and covered in graffiti. There is a row of houses where
the landlords are not taking any responsibility at all for the
property, nor indeed the tenants that are in it; they are private
sector landlords who are just walking away from their responsibilities.
The neighbourhood renewal office has actually had to board up
one of its windows because somebody smashes it constantly and
the people who decide to do graffiti do not need to use a tag,
they do not need to put a symbol up, they can just write their
name because they really do not feel anybody is going to tackle
them at all, they are that confident about it. In the midst of
all that I feel that a tremendous amount is being done on regeneration,
but unless we tackle the behaviour of the people there, it will
constantly undermine where we are at; constantly undermine it.
When a school has been improved, improved, improved, all you need
is for the front face of the school to have graffiti over it and
the parents, when they drop their kids off, are thinking "Well,
what's all that about? Why isn't that sorted?" Part of the
government's approach is to try to tackle and come at some of
the regeneration here, and the reason my unit works so closely
with colleagues in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, is
because there is a recognition that some of the most deprived
areas, some of the most difficult areas actually need to tackle
anti-social behaviour first and foremost. If you look at the neighbourhood
renewal areas, and going back to your earlier question to do with
the use of powers, you will see that neighbourhood renewal areas
over the last 12 months are using more powers than other areas,
they have actually now got teams in place which are being funded
by colleagues in other government departments. There is a recognition
that there are lots of good things, that you can build new houses,
you can have millennium bridges, you can do all of these things,
but if you do not tackle the behaviour of the minority of people
who ruin all of that, then you will never make any progress. We
are very, very clear that it is not just about protecting investment,
it is about anti-social behaviour hindering regeneration, which
is partly why the TOGETHER campaign and the unit were established
as a sort of inter-departmental . . . It is a bit like running
a rough sleepers unit: part of my job is to worry about what other
government departments are doing and to have a view on, say, the
Housing Bill and the Housing Act and private sector landlords
and to take through with the officials in ODPM and working for
ODPM ministers why it is so important to make sure that local
authorities are given powers to license them, partly around anti-social
behaviour. So there is that bit. I guess the other part, in terms
of joined-up working across government, is kind of re-living life
only on a macro scale. It is not rough sleeping, it is anti social
behaviour which is so huge. We do work very closely, for example,
the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) have now actually
responded to our need to make sure that magistrates' courts in
particular are more effective in linking in with communities,
dare I say being accountable to communities in some way, probably
a controversial thing to say, and certainly making sure that when
people come before them, they follow sentencing guidelines. That
is a kind of bottom line really and essentially therefore
we have been working with the Department for Constitutional
Affairs to establish specialist help and specialist ways of making
sure that the courts work more effectively.
Q258 Mrs Williams: Is it too soon for
you to be able to give us concrete examples of where for instance
this magistrates' sentencing issue has improved?
Ms Casey: It is too soon in terms
of that. We are certainly getting feedback from magistrates that
they are more confident. We have now got the Crown Prosecution
Service specialist prosecutors who are doing the links and an
early thing I did was meet the Attorney General.
Q259 Mrs Williams: Should it be the magistrates
themselves who tell you that they are getting more confident?
Surely somebody else should be judging their performance.
Ms Casey: Well they are; the Department
for Constitutional Affairs. That is where our unit works with
other government department. It is down to the Department for
Constitutional Affairs to have the relationship with the magistracy.
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