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Ms Blears: We have had an extremely interesting debate. I think that the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is now in discussion with the usual channels. I was about to say he was in danger of slightly sullying his reputation, with just a little hyperbole in his contribution. I hope that my contribution will reassure him that there is method in what the Government are doing, that there is rigorous analysis of the appropriate role for community support officers, and that we are certainly not in the business of uncontrolled mission creep or function creep, which I genuinely appreciate would give rise to concerns among hon. Members.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon made a good point that as community support officers become established in the fabric of the extended police family—clearly they are to hear to stay—then there is a need to ensure some consistency around their training standards and role. We must try to balance that with the important discretion for chief constables to decide which powers are appropriate for their community support officers in the context of the local policing challenge. Our Government are committed to recruiting an extra 20,000 CSOs.
Mr. Djanogly: My contention was that the process should be conducted now.
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Ms Blears: I will come to evaluation, monitoring and analysis of CSOs' role in due course. I was about to say this Government are committed to recruiting an extra 20,000 community support officers over the next three years. They will become an established part of the policing scene. In the two years they have been patrolling our streets, CSOs have really proven the success of the extended police family in England and Wales. I am delighted that hon. Gentlemen have praised the community support officers patrolling their own constituencies. I join them, for I have an extra 12 community support officers coming to my constituency shortly. I will be delighted to welcome them, for they are enormously reassuring to my community. Most community support officers spend about 70 per cent. of their time on patrol in their local areas. They are highly visible, which contributes to the reassurance they are able to give to those communities.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield—and to some extent the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome—talked about the possible diminution of the role of the attested officer and the beat constable. I want to place on record the sentiments I have expressed on a number of occasions: I see community support officers as a complement, an addition to the record numbers of police officers we already have patrolling our streets. I want them to direct their attention towards the low-level, antisocial behaviour that is top of our constituents' priorities but that, in the past, has often not received the attention it deserved because of other demands on police service. CSOs are in addition to our police officers.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield said that the Conservative Government were in the business of supporting civilianisation. They certainly were, for they had more civilians and 1,100 fewer police officers. We have more police officers and more civilians. Our approach is probably more appreciated by the British people than the hon. Gentleman's—which was, in practice, reducing the number of police officers available to protect our communities.
I see an important role not only for the constable but for all the federated ranks in our service, but again their role is changing. Many police constables will say that they welcome the opportunity to be leaders of neighbourhood teams. Increasingly, that is the job they are taking on. It is pretty complex, leading a team of police community support officers and neighbourhood wardens. Exercising influence over accredited persons who are not directly under their command and control requires a new set of skills but when I talk to police constables who are carrying out this role, many of them tell me they do not really know how they managed without the community support officers. They see them as a really good asset, provided they are concentrating on that low-level role.
Mr. Heath: The Minister is touching on a crucial thing. One plus point of what the Government have been doing in this area is the re-emphasis on the patrol function. Again, I have been arguing for many years that it is a specialism—something we need to nurture within the police service. The concept of the patrol function did not just happen by accident. It is not a
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marginal add-on to fighting crime while rushing around dealing with the big stuff. It is actually crucial to effective policing.
Ms Blears: I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. The danger, however, is that people start talking about neighbourhood policing as a kind of warm, fuzzy way of carrying out the job when it is actually hard-edged and driven by intelligence, through the national intelligence model and community intelligence. Indeed, community support officers are some of the best people for getting community intelligence. Local people will often talk to a CSO when they would not necessarily talk to a police constable. Because they are out there 70 per cent. of the time, CSOs make relationships with head teachers, shopkeepers and so on. Police constables, too, have such relationships, but CSOs are an excellent additional source of the intelligence that drives good, successful, hard-edge, proactive neighbourhood policing.
Mr. Mitchell: What the hon. Lady says is true, but I hope that she will not forget the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), who made it clear that, in respect of such relationships, PCSOs should not be a substitute for the beat officer. She will recall that point being made in Westminster Hall last week. There is substantial agreement between all three parties on the question of neighbourhood policing, but I agree with her hon. Friend on that important point.
Ms Blears: I am glad that we have some consensus across the parties. I want to deal now with some of our differences.
The hon. Members for Sutton Coldfield and for Huntingdon raised the issue of evaluation and asked whether we should be rolling out increasing powers in advance of national evaluation, which is due this summer. An interim evaluation, which has been circulated to members of the Committee, looks at the experience of CSOs in 27 forces.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is right that evidence on the impact of CSOs on reduction of crime is limited, but it is early days. However, their impact on public satisfaction is amazing. In Leeds and Bradford, 96 per cent. of those who had had contact with CSOs were satisfied with the way in which the situation was handled. In Northumbria, satisfaction with the police has risen by 32 per cent. in areas where CSOs have been introduced. They are certainly visible in Westminster, where 86 per cent. of respondents have seen a CSO. In St. Helens, in connection with one of our most intractable problems, young people reported that their interactions with community support officers were more positive than interaction with police officers.
The interim evaluation also shows that CSOs have had a significant impact. In Bradford and Leeds, 64 per cent. of people said that the visible presence of police officers including a CSO reassured them about their personal safety. That is good early evidence. We have commissioned an extensive report into community support officers; it is a huge study and it will report in a few months. However, the evaluation and research is
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ongoing, and I see no reason for us to halt in our tracks pending that full evaluation because, to a significant extent, I am reassured by the interim evaluation.
Mr. Mitchell: We disagree with the Minister. She should not be spending hard-earned taxpayers' money without the sort of evaluation being in place that she says is coming down the tracks. It is her duty as a Minister to act as guardian for the taxpayer—the hard-working families who cough up the huge sums of extra tax under this Government—and she should not spend that money until she has that evaluation.
She can pluck quotes from the interim paper as well as I can, but she should at least accept that one of the top indications of the impact of CSOs is to be found on page 4, where it states:
''Currently, there is limited evidence as to whether the presence of CSOs has an impact on crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour.''
That is not the evidence that the Minister or we require for the spending of large sums of money on rolling out a more expensive programme of PCSOs. That is the point.
Ms Blears: I was trying to be as fair and open as I could in indicating that parts of the evaluation were strong on visibility and public satisfaction but that evidence on crime reduction is still in early development.
I can trade further information with the hon. Gentleman if he so wishes. In the 12 months following the introduction of CSOs in Leeds city centre, vehicle-related crime fell by 31 per cent., and personal robbery by 47 per cent. I am not going to say that robbery was virtually halved as a result of CSOs being deployed in that city centre. Making that direct link would be premature and pretty disingenuous, and I will not do so.
The hon. Gentleman should take note of the public's satisfaction on the visibility and accessibility of CSOs and their impact on people's sense of reassurance. He should also be aware that, in the British crime survey of 18 months ago, some 21 per cent. of people were very concerned about the impact of antisocial behaviour on their quality of life. However, in the past 18 months, that is down to 16 per cent.—down by a massive five points. Given the introduction of CSOs, with their focus on low-level antisocial behaviour, it is not entirely a coincidence that people perceive the incidence of a range of things, including fly-tipping, graffiti, abandoned cars and gangs hanging around beginning to come down quite dramatically. That is testament to the Government's investment in the together campaign against antisocial behaviour, which is so popular with members of the public.
The powers that we seek to introduce through the Bill are designed to enable CSOs to deal with situations that they routinely face. It is not about extending their powers into a massive new area of work. I want them to concentrate on antisocial behaviour. Quite often when they are going about their patrolling business, they will come up against certain circumstances. In the
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Bill, we have tried, quite forensically, to see whether they need additional powers to cope with certain things that arise day to day. An example is begging. Often, CSOs will be out on the streets and will see people begging. Currently, under public order legislation, they have powers to deal with aggressive begging, but they do not have powers to deal with passive begging, which in its own way can be quite intimidating to people who want to use a cash machine or do their shopping in the city centre.
These powers mean that, after careful examination, a CSO can detain the beggar. They can ask them to stop begging and, if they do not stop, they can ask them for their name and address. What kind of name and address they might get from a beggar I am not sure, but if the beggar does not give a name and address he can be detained and the CSO can get a police officer. That is good not only for the public, in that we can get begging off the streets, but for beggars. Some 80 per cent. of beggars beg to feed a drug habit. If a CSO can help to channel a person into drug treatment, we can create a virtuous circle in getting them off the street. Let us consider the respect campaign in Nottingham and the antisocial behaviour trailblazer scheme in Brighton, which has been directed at begging and street drinking. The success of those campaigns in clearing up the begging and street drinking that make people's lives a misery is phenomenal. That is an example of the way in which powers have been targeted.
We are not involved in mission creep in a general sense, or in getting CSOs to take on more of a policing role. We are trying to ensure that chief constables still have the power to designate their CSOs with powers, which is important. Most of the Opposition amendments would remove the powers that we propose and prevent us from increasing the effectiveness of CSOs in dealing with low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. Another example of the powers that we are giving CSOs is the power to enable them to deal with some licensing offences where young people are attempting to buy alcohol in an off-licence. That is a big problem. In fact, the problems of binge drinking and antisocial behaviour are very much in the news at the moment.
We are saying that a CSO has the power to enter an off-licence on their own to try to enforce those licensing offences. However, they can go into a pub only in the company of a police officer, because we recognise that that could be a more confrontational environment. CSOs do not have the power to go into nightclubs at all. That is an example of the way in which we have tried to stagger powers. Rather than giving CSOs the power to enforce licensing offences in any environment, we have said that an off-licence is not likely to be too much of a problem and they can enter one on their own. If they go into a pub, they need to do so with a police officer, for added protection, but they cannot go into nightclubs, because that could be too confrontational.
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