Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
RT HON
CHARLES CLARKE
MP AND SIR
JOHN GIEVE
KCB
25 OCTOBER 2005
Q40 Chairman: The original argument,
which this Committee accepted in the last parliament, was that
the accommodation centres would enable you to achieve a number
of your targets in terms of speed of processing, removals and
so on. Even though the number of asylum applications has
fallen dramatically, does not the case still exist for having
some centralised system for dealing with applicants?
Mr Clarke: Yes, it does. Beyond
that, there is a case for detention in certain circumstances where
that work can be developed. That is why I avoided your invitation
to say there had been in principle a change. In principle, many
of the arguments are still there. The question of where you focus
resources on this remains an open question. John looked closely
at the Bicester decision. Is there anything you would like to
add on this particular case or more generally?
Sir John Gieve: Not really; the
original concept was that by taking people into a residential
centre, it would be easier to keep contact with them and to move
their cases faster. I suppose, in the intervening four years,
we have been able to move the cases very much faster and more
efficiently without having to go to the expense of building a
residential camp. We are also in the process of introducing the
new asylum model, which you have looked at already, and which
categorises applicants into different groups and takes some of
them through a detained route and so on. As a result, the economics
of Bicester did not stack up. That was the bottom line.
Q41 Chairman: So essentially it is not
worth the investment for the gain that you make?
Mr Clarke: In that particular
case.
Q42 Chairman: Can we move on then to
look more generally at resources? The Committee in the past said
that if there were falls in the number of asylum applications,
the first call on the money that is freed up should be to invest
in improving the decision-making system. In fact, I think there
are quite significant falls, cuts taking place, in spending on
processing applications. Can you give us an assurance that you
are keeping sufficient resources in the system to meet the targets
that you set yourself, given that you have already told us your
targets on some parts of the asylum system have slipped?
Mr Clarke: I think we can give
that assurance. I will ask John to talk about this in a second.
The reason why we are developing the new asylum model in the way
that John has just referred to it is because we think that the
progress we have made in reducing the time for decisions, and
indeed the number of applications being made, means that we have
the opportunity to really establish a regime for considering asylum
applications in an even more rigorous way, with a higher quality
of initial decision than we have been able to do in the past.
That is the basis upon which the new asylum model has been established.
We are committing the resources to it, which we think it needs.
John may have particular points on the resources aspects to add.
Sir John Gieve: We are shifting
some resources away from asylum case work especially to their
case work and into removals because there are so many fewer cases
to deal with, but we are also still pushing up quality. We do
measure the quality of decisions. We have internal assessors and
external assessors looking at the letters we send, and so on.
Those quality indices are still rising and so are the timeliness
indicators. Indeed, on our latest evidence when we wrote to you
last we thought we were going to miss one of our targets for timeliness
but actually I think we are now in a position to hit it after
all. Timeliness and quality remain absolute keystones, and of
course that is the keystone to an efficient process because a
lot of the initial problems around appeal we realise are raised
because of faults in the initial decision making.
Q43 Chairman: We were also a bit sceptical
last year about having a PSA that just said that your aim is to
reduce unplanned asylum claims, which means that they fall slightly
and you achieve the target. We also, as a Committee, were critical
of some of the other PSA targets that were set. I know that we
would like to be involved in discussion about the PSAs that you
set for a new spending review when it comes along. Is the Home
Office open to the idea that you might discuss with the Select
Committee some of your PSA targets before they are actually set
in stone?
Mr Clarke: Absolutely, and in
fact I think it would be a very positive thing to do, but my request
would be, Mr Denham, that at a relatively early stage you have
your hearings on this matter to have a discussion. I think it
would be a good thing to do and, by the way, in terms of Government
as a whole, I think the principle of the Select Committee being
more engaged in the process would be very useful. At the end of
the day, it would be a government decision across Government with
all departments of Government, particularly the Treasury, very
directly involved in the process. That is right and that is what
should be the case. I think a discussion informed by an informed
consideration by yourselves would be beneficial.
Chairman: That is very helpful indeed.
Can we move now to look at police and crime issues?
Q44 Nick Harvey: Home Secretary, in the
Government's Green Paper on police reform you insisted that you
did not want change for change's sake, and you talked about ensuring
that police connected to people in their neighbourhoods rather
than creating remote and disconnected forces. Then a year ago
Sir Ian Blair told this Committee he thought it was preferable
to have a system of individual forces playing a lead role with
particular specialisms and then sharing that with other forces.
Why then has it suddenly been decided to carry out a drastic restructuring
at top speed of the police based on the creation of large, regional
forces rather than that alternative of lead forces in areas of
specialism?
Mr Clarke: The immediate proximate
answer to your question is that the Inspector of Constabulary
produced a very detailed report on the efficacy and effectiveness
of forces, on their current size and structure to meet the responsibilities
they now have. The Inspectorate concluded that too many of the
existing forces are too small in terms of providing that effective
support to local communities. I have accepted that recommendation
and asked the police to respond to the Inspectorate of Constabulary
report by making proposals. What I have said from the outset is
that there are four levels. Level one is at the level of the local
ward. I think it is very important that in a ward, or a similar
locality of that size, there is a police team. For example, in
London by May 2007, they anticipate having the situation of a
sergeant, two police constables and two or three dedicated community
support officers in every ward in London. Our ambition as a government
is to achieve that by 2008 for the country as a whole. So you
have a situation where in each local community there are police
community support officers, and others such as Neighbourhood Watch
wardens, or whatever, working in a policing team locally and the
local people living in a locality will know the names addresses,
email addresses and phone numbers of the people there, so that
there is an immediate police presence in that locality. If that
can be achieved, as we anticipate, and to which, by the way, the
police have signed up, that is, in my opinion, a massive achievement
and a transformation in local policing in the country. At the
level above that, the second level, the Basic Command Unit, having
a BCU Commander, with delegated autonomy, able to act together
with, for example, the District or Unitary Council leadership,
with other services, so they work as a team in a Crime and Disorder
Partnership, which develops a real strategy for fighting crime
in that locality in a particular community, that is a second level
which I think is very important. The third level is the process
of reorganisation that you are now describing, where you have
the need to dedicate resources to those local areas, to the BCUs,
but also, particularly on the intelligence front, when dealing
with things like people trafficking, drug dealing, serious organised
crime, to be able to really analyse what is taking place, and
finally, to work with the national agencies, in particular the
Serious and Organised Crime Agency, which comes into effect in
April next year, and to be able to work in that way. I think that
is a very coherent set of four levels of policing which in no
sense take accountability away from the very local area but really
put resource where it is needed.
Q45 Nick Harvey: It sounds as if the
developments you are describing at a local level are going to
take place over a period of time. What is notable about your proposals
for these force reorganisations is that you want to do it at a
very high speed. You are keen that police authorities come forward
with requests for these reorganisations, but when this Committee
looked at police reform previously, it concluded that there was
little appetite within the police or the wider community for major
structural upheaval or amalgamations. What sort of initial response—I
know you will not yet perhaps have had formal responses—have
you had to this suggestion? What pattern of forces do you think
will emerge? Are you anticipating a lot of resistance at a local
level?
Mr Clarke: Generally very positive.
I think what has changed since the Committee's previous report
is the HMIC assessment on the effectiveness of the forces on their
current size. That is something which the police take very seriously,
as they rightly should, and I have to take very seriously and
my ministerial colleagues and official colleagues have to take
very seriously. The immediate response has been very positive,
with a very good discussion taking place in each part of the country.
I have said that I think that the changes should respect Government
Office for the region boundaries and that should be the case.
There are some who think that that is not right for policing in
their particular locality for whatever reason, and there are some
forces—not many, a small number of forces—who do not
think change should necessarily affect them. But the overall majority
of police forces, both at the level of the chief constable and
the ACPO grades, but also at the police authority level, in some
cases, are very enthusiastic about the change that we are talking
about but in most cases generally accept it. There are some exceptions
which you may quote at me which I am aware of where there is resistance
to this approach but in general I have been struck by the positive
buy-in by the senior leadership of the force.
Q46 Nick Harvey: Does respecting the
government regional boundaries mean following them?
Mr Clarke: It does not mean following
them in the sense of saying the new force should be a regional
force. Respecting them means not crossing them, if you see what
I mean. I can imagine in a given region you might have two or
three forces, depending on the size and structure of the region,
but you should not cross the regional boundary.
Q47 Colin Burgon: Home Secretary, when
it comes to the process of merging forces, as I understand it,
legislation is not required. There are basically two routes or
two steps that can be progressed. Either local police authorities
can actually request of you that mergers take place or, similarly,
you can initiate it yourself in the interests of the force. A
recent letter to the Executive Director of the Association of
Police Authorities seemed to strongly suggest that you are favouring
the role whereby authorities ask you to initiate or support this
process. Would that be correct, and why have you particularly
adopted that approach?
Mr Clarke: That is correct, and
the reason why I have adopted that approach is that it seems to
me very important in all these reform areas that the reform is
led by the profession itself, by the police themselves, in so
far as possible. So I have asked the police on the basis, as I
say, of the police assessment, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's
assessment, to make the views, to decide what they think is the
best in their particular locality. I am optimistic that in most
parts of the country that will be in fact what happens. I have
set up a small central unit led by Chief Constable John Gifford
to coordinate with people to try and establish exactly how the
situation would operate in a given way and, as far as I am aware,
the situation is moving reasonably constructively at the moment.
So my preference would be for the response to come from the forces
themselves, to say "This is how we think would be the best
way to do it," within these broad criteria which I have set
out, and for us to say, "That is fine. On you go." In
areas where that did not happen for whatever reason, I would obviously
want to look at that carefully and decide how to deal with that
circumstance, but my strong preference, if possible, would be
to enact effectively what the police in their particular locality
thought was right.
Q48 Colin Burgon: When it comes to the
emerging of individual police forces, what scope is there then
for parliamentary scrutiny of those moves?
Mr Clarke: I am very happy to
have debate that in whatever way is desired. There are complicated
issues about the more effective and less effective forces and
trying to ensure that the new force deals with both of them, but
I am very ready to either have a general parliamentary debate
about it, or through this Committee to send my proposals to Parliament
to look at. As I say, the current proposals do not require legislation,
and I think that is beneficial, actually, rather than not, but
I am perfectly happy, if the Committee has a view about the best
way of promoting parliamentary consideration of this, to do so.
But my request, which I need to make less to this Committee perhaps
than to the House as a whole, is to look at the efficiency of
the police service in the round rather than simply saying that
what exists today is necessarily the best way of doing things.
Q49 Mr Browne: Home Secretary, you have
indicated that the driving factor for these amalgamations is the
need to tackle—I think I quote you directly—terrorism,
people trafficking and drug smuggling, but in large parts of the
country, important though those all are, those are not the dominant
concerns of people, particularly in rural areas. I see at the
moment the figure given is 4,000 as a minimum number of police
required within any given force in order to deal with those sorts
of issues that you have addressed. I think seven of the 43 forces
have that minimum number of 4,000 at present, so although you
have not arrived at a final figure, would you be able to give
us some sort of indication of how many forces you imagine will
be left standing at the end of this process? Presumably fewer
than 43 and more than one per region. Where is it likely to be?
Within what range?
Mr Clarke: I am not going to predict
that, for this reason: that I genuinely want the decision as to
what is best in each region to be taken without a steer from me
that says it should be A, B or C. I would just make one point.
Obviously, you are right that the crime has a different incidence
in different parts of the country but I do believe the kind of
proposals I set out in my answer to Mr Harvey about a local policing
presence in every part of the country—I emphasize every
part of the country—is what many people in the country are
looking to, both in relation to issues like antisocial behaviour
and also in terms of crime. It is also true—and I think
this is, unfortunately and sadly, increasingly true of rural areas—that
drugs are appearing in rural areas and that those drugs come from
somewhere; there is a supply stream which brings them to a particular
local area, which does need to be addressed by an effective policing
operation. That is happening in some areas but it needs to happen
more. My answer to your question on the numbers is I will not
give you a number, but I will say one, two or three for each region.
Q50 Mr Browne: Possibly just one.
Mr Clarke: Possibly just one.
Q51 Nick Herbert: Home Secretary, can
I ask about the principle of accountability in relation to these
potentially much larger forces. The accountability of county forces
is already arguably both weak and confused as between the Home
Secretary and local police authorities, as perhaps best evidenced
by the dispute between your predecessor and the Chief Constable
of Humberside. You rely on the fact that there are these local
policing teams as a defence of the fact that policing would still
be local, even in a big regional force, but where is the accountability
for those local policing teams? At the moment, the accountability
is at least at the county level. That is still a long way from
the local community. It is not just the fact that the policing
may be provided locally. It is the means by which local people
can influence it and hold it accountable, and that is going to
be much further away under a regional force.
Mr Clarke: I think the reverse
is true, with respect. Firstly, what we want and what I think
we will have in each locality, as I say, roughly at the level
of a ward, is a policing team, known locally, discussing with
the local community in a wide variety of different ways the priorities
for local policing in that particular patch. I think if you have
police officers dedicated to that area, working with community
support officers and so on, that will lead to a much better engagement
between the local community and its policing priorities and the
police priorities. At a larger level, by making the Basic Command
Units and the Districts coterminous, I think you will achieve
a situation where you again have accountability, with elected
politicians locally, of all political parties, of course, who
are on the district council and how they operate with policing
there about the policing priorities in that locality. You then
have the issue, as you correctly say, of the accountability structure
at the wider level, whether it is the county or a larger geographical
area of two or three counties or whatever it may happen to be.
One of the specific aspects on which we are looking for proposals
as we come down is how we get accountability at that level as
well into the system. But actually, the Police Reform White Paper
set out a lot, I think rightly, about the need to get elected
individuals—also non-elected, but principally elected individuals
from local government involved in the policing decisions much
more than is the case now, through the existing police authority
structure. So I think accountability will be significantly increased,
even if we did not achieve, as I hope we will, a better level
of accountability of the police authority as a whole.
Q52 Mr Malik: Home Secretary, my question
is linked to Nick's to an extent. My fear is that community confidence
in the police may well be undermined due to an inability to communicate
the benefits of the potential mergers. This stems from my anecdotal
experience in Dewsbury, where divisions were merged and there
was a big outcry, and the police were completely incapable of
communicating the benefits. The fact is it is on the ground now,
and it is working extremely well, but that is a real challenge.
I am just wondering how you can allay those fears.
Mr Clarke: I think there has been
a communication deficit throughout in this. That is why I articulated,
as I did in the answer to Mr Harvey, the four levels that we are
dealing with, and I think that gives a greater clarity of looking
at it. I think the way it has traditionally been is each chief
constable does their own thing in their own way, in a way that
is not as coherent and consistent around this, even to the extent
of sometimes chief constables reorganising their Basic Command
Units when a new chief comes in, sometimes respecting local authority
boundaries, other times not. I think it is very important that
we get a consistency of process here, which I think then
in turn has the possibility of enabling communication of the type
you describe to actually take place. Communication, at the end
of the day, is not about articulacy of a politician or a police
officer; it is really about whether there is a strong message
to be communicated, and the strong message I am saying needs to
be communicated is that we want strong policing in every community
at the level of the district council—Dewsbury, for example—and
how that is dealt with right the way through, and I do not think
that has always been there. I think there has been a slight uncertainty
about the organisation of the police at a sub-constabulary level.
What I am trying to achieve is greater coherence and long-term
commitment in relation to that structure, which I think will then
lead to communication of the type you are describing.
Q53 Mr Benyon: Home Secretary, do you
think this review is really taking into account the possibility
of greater cross-constabulary working, for example, in areas such
as training, criminal intelligence, other areas, that could allow
a localised force in which local people have confidence to exist,
but to have a critical mass for certain areas of their activities?
Mr Clarke: I have, and I have
specifically considered, as indeed Her Majesty's Inspectorate
of Constabulary did, the idea of federations of forces rather
than a strategic force, but the conclusion I came to, and also,
separately, HMIC came to, is that the benefits from this reform
will both happen if we have strategic forces rather than federations
and I stand by that conclusion. Of course, there are some people
who say "Don't touch our force. We will work together on
back office functions" or whatever it may happen to be, but
I do not think that takes this as far as we need to in terms of
ensuring we get the effectiveness at each stage. I am always ready,
being a very flexible individual, to listen to propositions that
come from anywhere on this matter as to how we can do it better
than we are, but I am genuinely awaiting answers from the different
forces throughout the country as to what they feel about the situation,
and I will listen genuinely to what they have to say, but I think
if there is any desire to obfuscate the need for change in the
areas set out by the Inspectorate of Constabulary, that would
be unfortunate.
Q54 Chairman: Can I ask you whether some
of your steers do not contradict each other? In an earlier steer,
you could end up with one force per region, or presumably in the
case of Wales, country, which would be coterminous with the National
Assembly for Wales. If you look at crime patterns in Wales, there
is almost no connection between criminal operations in the north
of Wales, which tend to link into Merseyside and that part of
England, and in south Wales, where the link tends to be along
the M5 to Bristol, Birmingham and so on. Is there not a danger
if you follow too strongly your steer on regional or national
government boundaries that you end up with a structure that does
not meet the patterns of criminal activity?
Mr Clarke: I accept the danger,
but I do not think it is substantial. The police can always argue,
as any other public service can, quite truthfully, that the patterns
of issue that they are trying to address do not reflect local
government, national government or regional government boundaries
directly, and there is always some weight in that argument; it
has some substance at any given time. However, my own observation
is—and this is through all my years in politics—that
the less clear the boundaries are, the less clear the responsibilities
are, the less clear the accountabilities are, the more difficult
it is to actually address some of those issues. So I say the way
to tackle the M5 as a case in point, or the way to tackle the
Liverpool/north Wales relationship, which I agree with you is
a very well developed one, is through cooperation between those
forces rather than by trying to bring them within one single force
structure of that type. It may be there are problems that arise
in that compared to what might be a single force operation, but
I do not really think so. I think at the end of the day the bottom
line is to respect the regional government boundaries that are
there. You could argue the regional government boundaries are
irrational. I was not entirely signed up to the eastern region
boundaries as the MP for Norwich South when it happened. We did
not want to be in association with Mr Clappison and his ilk down
in the other end of the region. However, in the interests of cooperation,
we have worked well together in this way. You can have these discussions
for ever and I think actually the discussions are diverting from
the service delivery, and it is better just to say, "OK,
we accept those boundaries" and that is where we go.
Q55 Mr Streeter: Before moving on to
crime figures, Home Secretary, do you expect restructuring to
save you money?
Mr Clarke: I do not expect it
to save the service money out of the overall position, though
I do expect it to mean that more money can be allocated to front-line
crime fighting than is currently the case. To put it the other
way round, I think there are a lot of inefficiencies in the way
that policing currently operates. The benefit of any savings I
hope should go to policing directly.
Q56 Mr Streeter: On crime figures, what
is the reason for the increase in violent crime?
Mr Clarke: I do not actually accept
that violent crime has increased. This is a discussion we can
go round for ever. I still think the British Crime Survey, which
shows violent crime has fallen by 43% since 1995 and 34% since
1997, is the best thing. The recorded violent crime, to take a
different statistic, rose by 6% between April-June 2005 compared
to the same period 12 months earlier, and I think the reason for
the increase in recorded crime is that an increasing proportion
of violent crime is being recorded, which actually I welcome;
I think it is the right way to go.
Q57 Mr Streeter: Are you questioning
the police figures then reporting crime up by 6%?
Mr Clarke: Not in the slightest.
I think they are accurately recording crime, but that is what
I say: there is more crime being recorded. What all the figures
indicate is a relatively small proportion of crime is actually
recorded and there are a number of steps which lead to the increase
in recorded crime. Let me list them: the increase in the number
of police officers means that more crime will be recorded, since
more police officers will be out there recording crime. There
is the fact that we are trying to get higher levels of recorded
crime, for example, in relation to sex offences or domestic violence
or race violence, which we positively want to happen, because
we want people to record that crime rather than shove it under
the carpet, leads to higher levels of recording crime. So there
are a number of factors where we actually want recorded crime—I
emphasize recorded crime—to increase, and that is what has
happened.
Q58 Mr Streeter: If you are wrong on
that, of course, you could be accused of being breathtakingly
complacent.
Mr Clarke: I am so glad this Committee
is not a party political gathering.
Q59 Mr Streeter: That is not a party
political point. You are in charge of responding to crime in this
country. One very well respected source of information tells us
violent crime is going up, anecdotally most of us in our constituencies
it feels like violent crime is going up, the newspapers are increasingly
full of ghastly incidents of violent crime in this country, and
you are sitting in front of us today saying, "Actually, violent
crime is not on the increase in this country. It is just that
we are getting better at recording it." If you are right,
fine, but if you are wrong, is that not breathtakingly complacent?
Mr Clarke: Mr Streeter, let me
be very clear. Firstly, I am not in the slightest complacent.
The level of violent crime is far, far higher than it ought to
be in the country that we want. The level of antisocial behaviour
is far, far higher than it ought to be. We have a whole set of
measures in place to try and address these. We do more in relation
to that rather than less. However, the great debate about the
crime figures does not take us very far because we are measuring
different things. There is, firstly, the measurement, as best
we can, of the amount of crime that there actually is in a wide
variety of different areas. The best measure of that is the British
Crime Survey. However, there are criticisms, which have weight,
that the British Crime Survey does not measure certain types of
crime and so on as much as it should. We have to look closely
at that. The second issue is the measurement of recorded crime,
ie that part of the crime that takes place which is actually recorded.
That is a different thing from the level of crime; it is what
is recorded. That is changed by a number of different measures,
some of which I listed earlier on. There is, thirdly, fear of
crime, people's perception of crime and what is happening in any
given locality. Actually, the most recent figures suggest that
fear of crime is coming down as well, but that is a slightly better
way of dealing with it than the anecdotal point. There is, fourthly,
the deeply objective recording of crime that takes place in the
media. As you go through different newspapers you will see different
levels of crime recorded. I do not think there has been any big
change recently. There is no question that for many, many years
crime has sold papers, local and national, and so it is not surprising
crime is covered in that way. I make no criticism of the media
for doing so. The fact is there will be appalling crimes that
will happen, and they will be recorded, and they should be recorded
and they should be reported, but that does not tell you about
the volumes of crime. So I am not in any sense complacent. I take
crime very seriously, but I get frustrated—which I am probably
expressing in my answer to you—because there are different
things which are measured and different things reported, and the
differences need to be understood.
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