 House of Commons |
Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Policing and Crime Bill |
Policing and Crime Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Andrew Kennon, Committee
Clerks † attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeThursday 5 February 2009(Morning)[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]Policing and Crime BillWritten evidence to be reported to the HousePC
12 Rights of
Women PC 13
National Organisation of Residents
Associations PC
14 C.
Hargrave PC 15
Toynbee
Hall PC 16
City of London
Corporation PC
17 Robyn
Thompson PC 18
Peter
Schevtschenko PC
19 Laura
Kane 9
am
The
Chairman: I welcome all hon. Members to the sitting. This
is an early start. Some of us have made it and others have not. I
congratulate the Committee on making good progress on Tuesday
afternoon. I am confident that we will make further constructive
progress
today.
Clause 5Police
collaboration Question
proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the
Bill. Mr.
David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds) (Con): It is early in the
morning, hence my uncharacteristic lack of sharpness. I will redress
that temporary deficiency by opening in a positive spirit on clause 5,
the subject of which is collaboration. The Committee will be happy to
know that the Minister and I agree on the principles that the clause
will bring into effect. The Government and I believe that it will
improve the quality of policing across the board. With your permission,
Sir Nicholas, I think that it is worth spending some time in the clause
stand part debate airing the recent history of collaboration and what
the clause will do to take the argument forward. The clause has new and
interesting powers, which I will ask the Minister
about. In
September 2005, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary
published a famous report, “Closing the Gap: A Review of the
‘Fitness for Purpose’ of the Current Structure of
Policing in England and Wales”. Primarily and importantly, it
examined the provision of protective services known in the trade as
level 2 services. To some minds that is a sloppy shorthand, but I will
use level 2 interchangeably with protective services to ensure that the
Committee is not detained for too long. Those services relate primarily
to serious and organised crime, child protection issues, terrorism and
so forth. That important report came to the conclusion that
“when viewed from
the context of the range of challenges and future threats now facing
the service and the communities it polices, the 43 force structure is
no longer fit for purpose. In the interests of the efficiency and
effectiveness of policing it should change. Whilst some smaller forces
do very well, and some larger forces less so, our conclusion is that
below a certain size there simply is not a sufficient critical mass to
provide the necessary sustainable level of protective services that the
21st century increasingly
demands.” At
about the same time, the Bichard report into the Soham murders
highlighted the ineffective co-ordination between police forces in
tackling cross-border crime, which had the tragic consequences that we
all recall. In 2006, the chairman of the Association of Police
Authorities, Bob Jones,
wrote: “unequivocally
that there is a gap in the capacity and capability of the service to
tackle adequately level two
criminality”. He
aired that view at some length in volume 12 of “Policing
Today”. In
short, there is a general consensus across the tripartite structure
that there are gaps at level 2. The consequences that flowed from
HMIC’s report “Closing the Gap” ended in a
recommendation that the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for
Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), took forward with a plan for
force amalgamation. I shall not detain the Committee with, in my view,
the unfortunate history of that Government initiative for merger,
because now is not the time to go over old, controversial party
political ground, and it would detract from the import of what is
immediately at issue in the clause, which is
collaboration. However,
it is important to understand the failed attempt to close the level 2
gap. It is up to all politicians of good will who want a sister service
to do the job better to work out what we can do as a country to close
that gap. It is impossible to envision a Government, whether the
current Administration or an Administration of a future stripe, in the
near or medium-term future, returning to the suggestion that there
should be forced amalgamations or mergers whereby nine or half a dozen
strategic forces are compelled to merge. For example, Cheshire
constabulary would be stripped of its cap badges and independence and
put into a north-western strategic force. That proposal was proffered
by the then Home Secretary, following the report to which I referred.
Unambiguously, it is not on the Conservative party agenda, whether in
Opposition or should we be in Government, to revisit such
matters. It
is worth repeating that there will be no mergers from us. I accept that
the Minister will have his own views, but my understanding is that Her
Majesty’s Government are not seeking to rerun the failed attempt
at force merger. That is why the solution proffered by the clause must
be seen as a direct response to the fact that we need an answer,
although we do know that merger is not that
answer. After
that brief historical reminder, I shall move to collaboration. On 17
July 2007, the Minister’s predecessor announced that 22 bids for
demonstrator status had been received from which a total of 10
demonstrator sites collaborating on matters ranging from back-office
services to serious organised crime had been selected. On 12 December
2007, the then Minister with responsibility for policing said that
those initiatives had been selected from 22 bids to provide a balanced
programme throughout
England and Wales to explore and develop the models of collaboration
between forces that can deliver vital level 2
services. Above
all, I emphasise that I am not advancing a dry argument about
organisational structures and the process of machinery. Why was the
collaboration process moved forward by the then Minister? He was right
to stress that it was to protect the public more effectively and
efficiently. His colleagues at the Home Office were also right to say
that collaborative working was a key part of a national programme that
the Government wanted to take forward and that it had the
support—as it does now—of her Majesty’s
Opposition. It was done in consultation with the Association of Chief
Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities. The selected
demonstrator sites were offered £3.7 million of Home Office
funding to contribute to the start-up costs and to cover the evaluation
process managed by the National Policing Improvement Agency, which I
should say, parenthetically, I find from my work on the Front Bench is
an admirable organisation. It gives valuable advice to Her
Majesty’s Ministers and to shadow Front-Bench Home Office
Ministers.
The
Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing
(Mr. Vernon Coaker): I thank the hon. Gentleman
for that remark. If a problem emerges, everyone says that it should be
given to the NPIA, which—under Chief Constable Peter Neyroud who
runs it—works exceptionally hard. Sometimes it is criticised
because it goes into difficult areas. It is good that he congratulates
it and I join him in doing
so.
Mr.
Ruffley: I am grateful to the Minister. I wish to go
further. This is in order, Sir Nicholas. You are a very strict Chairman
and we all admire you for that. I shall talk of the NPIA for a minute
in the context of its being an important part now of the collaboration
that I hope will happen more often if this clause is enacted.
Picking up on
the Minister’s point, some people in ill-informed quarters, who
are not as familiar with policing as the Minister and my shadow
Front-Bench colleagues, consider it fashionable to call the NPIA a
quango, which is a term of abuse quite often used by the media and some
politicians. The NPIA is not in my view a quango. It is a high-quality
organisation which acts in the public interest, not just by giving
confidential and private advice at a high level to Ministers. It has
always been available to hon. Members, certainly in my party and, I
fancy, in the Liberal Democrat Opposition. That is part of the ethos of
British policing. It has been refreshing in my 18 months as shadow
Minister to see on a day-to-day basis, with one or two very rare
exceptions, that party politics is really of no interest to the
policing community. It wants effective solutions and it looks to
Parliament and Ministers and even shadow Ministers to advance the
effectiveness of British policing, to give the police and the whole
policing family the tools needed to do the job, and collaboration is
one part of it. The NPIA is important and we respect and value the work
it
does. The
NPIA is part of the monitoring process looking at the progress of
collaboration and the tangible benefits that it can bring. The NPIA has
to ensure that the shared knowledge—the success of certain
collaborations—is spread more widely to parts of the country
where that
collaborative process is perhaps not known. So the NPIA is important in
our deliberations and in the development of this policy should this
clause be
enacted. The
current legislation relating to collaboration agreements is set out in
section 23 of the Police Act 1996. Under this section, two or more
chief officers may—subject to the approval of the relevant
police authorities—make collaboration agreements between their
forces in the interests of the efficiency or effectiveness of policing.
In addition, two or more police authorities may make collaboration
agreements for the provision of premises, equipment or other material
or facilities. A collaboration agreement under the existing legislation
may be varied or determined, as one might expect, by a subsequent
agreement. The Secretary of State has the power, after considering any
representations made by the parties concerned, to direct those parties
to enter into a collaboration agreement or an agreement to vary or
determine an existing agreement.
It might be
useful if I illustrated what the concept of a collaboration agreement
means in the real world. I shall refer to two examples of collaboration
agreements that I have been briefed on. However, because I have chosen
these two specific examples does not mean that they are the only ones
in England and Wales, nor does it mean that they are necessarily the
best, or examples of collaboration that have yielded the biggest
financial benefit so far—they are merely the two examples that I
am familiar with.
9.15
am After
the Committee, I shall be looking at other examples of collaboration
around the country. For the moment, I draw the Committee’s
attention to the five east midland forces: Derbyshire, Leicestershire,
Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire. They have a history
going back to 2001, when the east midlands special operation unit was
formed to create one of the largest and most significant collaborations
in the country. The collaboration of those forces goes well beyond
special operations and the unit that was set up in 2001. The five
forces also collaborate in areas relating to state management, fleet
management, training of officers and staff, and procurement. They work
together operationally in areas even more specific than that, such as
water search, air support, hostage and crisis negotiation and firearms.
Additionally, Derbyshire is a lead force for the east midlands
counter-terrorism intelligence unit.
The
collaboration is overseen by a collaboration board, comprising the
chairs of the five police authorities that I referred to, and the five
chief constables. This is important, because it goes to the heart of my
earlier remarks about the need for specificity in collaboration
agreements. It is not just on a nod and a wink; if these things are to
work they need to be properly nailed down in writing and a clear
government structure put in place. That is why the experience of the
east midlands collaboration is worth studying.
There is a
further oversight of collaborative work through the east midlands
police authorities joint committee, which has the delegated powers of a
police authority when overseeing collaborative activity between those
forces. In addition to that oversight, the east midlands region
maintains a central collaboration programme team which is led at chief
officer level. The team exists to promote collaboration and manage the
region’s
collaboration programme. The programme is set out in a collaboration
plan, which I believe is a first in England. That programme has a
strategic element to it and a plan of work. The three workstreams that
are currently in play relate to building capacity and capability, and
to improving productivity, which will always be a remorseless and
ceaseless search for many years to come. The search for greater
productivity in our public services is a never-ending war. No Minister
will ever be happy with the productivity levels that he sees in any
force; there is always room for improvement. Thirdly, they relate to
putting in place the structures relating to information technology, to
human resources and to finance, which will support better
collaboration.
The east
midlands chief constables and police authorities are proud of the
proactive approach to collaboration that they have taken. One reason
why this clause, with its new powers—I will get on to them in a
minute—is important is because not every part of England and
Wales is as proactive as the east midlands. At the moment,
collaboration operates in an unsatisfactory patchwork quilt way, which
is what the clause seeks to remedy. East midlands police authorities
give two reasons why they have been specially proactive. They say that
it is a direct response to the operational risks identified in the HMIC
“Closing the gap” report, to which I referred at the
start of my remarks. Its main author, Sir Denis O’Connor,
described the region as the most at risk in the country as far as
protective services were concerned. Therefore, forces in the east
midlands have a particular reason for wanting to get on with
collaboration. Moreover,
the collaboration approach in the east midlands is a
response—this is important—to the financial position
facing those police authorities and forces in the region. The five
authorities stated that over the three-year period 2010-11, they
received—and will receive—£57 million
less in Government grant than the raw funding formula indicated that
they should get. We touched on that matter yesterday in the police
grant debate, so I will not divert into a repetition of the floors and
damping arguments. It is well-rehearsed argument because some police
authorities feel aggrieved. If I can continue the grown-up and
consensual relationship that I currently have with the Minister, I will
say that it is not a problem that will go away with a change of
Government. Under the current damping arrangements, there are winners
and losers, and there are no easy solutions to that that will please
every police authority or force. It is a technical issue that admits to
no party political fiddling—if I can put it that way. There are
Conservative and Labour areas that do better than they should under the
current grant arrangements, and there are Labour and Conservative
authorities—[Interruption.] The Minister points to
his own in Nottinghamshire. There are authorities which are, in their
view, disadvantaged and do less well than they should. When I say that,
I mean that they do less well than the raw application of the formula
grant
suggests. Ms
Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab): I understand that
this is not a debate about police funding or police performance, but I
want to put on record the fact that having looked closely at such
matters over the past 10 years I can say that some of the hon.
Gentleman’s statements are quite misplaced. In Northamptonshire,
although the pattern has been up and down, the authority
has received substantial financial assistance, and great assistance in
the form of interventions from the Home Office with which to support
improvements in its performance. Without going into the whole debate, I
just wanted to put that fact on the record.
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