Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


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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