Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
140-159)
RT HON
JACQUI SMITH
MP AND SIR
DAVID NORMINGTON
KCB
20 JANUARY 2009
Q140 Bob Russell: I said perceived!
Jacqui Smith: Let us help people's
perceptions by making clear that there has not been a reduction
in beat officers. There has been, with £1 billion-worth of
Government investment, the development of a neighbourhood policing
team in every neighbourhood in England and Wales whose names people
know and where people can access them. The Police Community Support
Officers are a crucial part of those teams at the school gate,
through monthly meetings, through seeing them walking down their
road, through having access to their contact details and through
the sort of information that is now much more widely available.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that that is a fundamental way
in which we can ensure that policing is visible and responsive.
Incidentally, through that we can make sure that the public has
the confidence to report crimes and actually work alongside the
police in bringing down crimes and anti-social behaviour and that
is why I have made it such a priority.
Q141 Bob Russell: I am grateful for
the emphasis you have clearly given there on the neighbourhood
policing which is clearly intended to bridge that gap, perceived
or otherwise. So far as the Police Community Support Officers
are concerned, I am grateful for what you said there. Is there
any chance of that robust support of the police family being repeated
by you and other Home Office Ministers time and time again because,
sadly, the Daily Mail in particular dismisses that element
of the police family? I personally think they are doing a grand
job.
Jacqui Smith: I agree with you
wholeheartedly and I do repeat it time after time. What is more
important, as you will know and as many people around the room
will know, is that when we ask our constituents, they are extremely
supportive of the work that Police Community Support Officers
do as well.
Q142 Chairman: We hear that you have
patched up your differences with the Mayor of London just in time
to announce the new Commissioner, is that right?
Jacqui Smith: That is rather along
the lines of, "When did I stop beating my husband?"
The Mayor of London and I have always had, I hope, as a priority,
when it comes to the decision about the next Commissioner, choosing
the person who will do the right thing for London and the right
thing for their national responsibilities with respect to counter-terrorism
and more widely as well.
Q143 Chairman: When can we expect
a name? When does the white smoke come out of the chimney?
Jacqui Smith: I do not believe
it will be too long, but obviously the important point to make
here is that the process is that the Home Secretary makes a recommendation
to the Queen and I would certainly not want to answer for the
Queen. I do not think it would be appropriate for any of us to
push her on this.
Q144 Chairman: I think you have the
support of many on that. Our final area involves Home Office statistics
and that concerns knife crime. As you came in you met two parents
of the victims of knife crime. Last week we had DAC Hitchcock
giving evidence to us and we opened our newspapers today to find
out that he is about to leave you and go to another job. This
is a very short period for an anti-knife tsar who is supposed
to be fashioning a strategy for the Government. Why has he only
stayed 18 months?
Jacqui Smith: He has made very
clear in the comments he has made to the newspapers that he will
certainly want to see out the specific work on the Tackling Knives
Action Programme. Despite the very important contribution made
by DAC Hitchcock, it has not been about one person, it has been
about the combined work of the police forces, particularly in
the 10 areas which have been part of the programme, their partners
in local government and in the community and the sort of very
brave and creditable initiatives that you yourselves have had
the opportunity to hear about this morning. I am always impressed
by those that are led by the families of people who have suffered
terrible losses but who nevertheless turn that tragedy into something
positive in terms of trying to prevent that from happening again.
Q145 Chairman: He is retiring and
therefore drawing a full pension but then taking up another job.
There are a number of senior officers who are receiving salaries
of over £200,000 a year because they are drawing their pension
having retired from one part of the police and then they are employed
in another part of the police. Is that a practice that you support
or have concerns about?
Jacqui Smith: It is the case that
if you are retiring now with 30 years' service you have access
to your police pension. The Government reformed the police pensions
system from 2006. First of all, anybody joining the police service
now will need to serve 35 years before they get access to their
pension. Secondly, what we tend to see is people starting a police
career at a later age now than previously, but I have in the past
and I will continue to make the case for the appropriate use of
public money when it comes to police pay and pensions, although
I have not always had the support of this Committee for doing
that!
Q146 Chairman: We are very pleased
that you have had a settlement with the police this year. On the
knife crime statistics, we questioned Mr Hitchcock as to why he
was not informed about the use of the statistics on knife crime.
I must give you credit, Home Secretary, because you did come before
the House and give us a mea culpa for having used those
statistics without the quality checks. Why was he not informed
about the publication of these statistics?
Jacqui Smith: As I think he made
clear at the meeting, at the point at which that particular fact
sheet was published he was on holiday and that is why he did not
see those statistics in that form. His deputy who is working with
us permanently in the Home Office, the ACPO secondee to the Tackling
Knife Crime Programme, did see them and they had also been the
subject of discussions in the weekly meetings that we have in
the Home Office and with other departments on evaluating the progress
of the Tackling Knife Crime Programme. It is important to set
those figures in context. The very fact that people believe there
is a high level of knife crime is part of the reason why they
themselves feel that they have to arm themselves and go out on
the streets with a knife. When you are facing that sort of concern
I think the public expect that where there is information suitably
explained, suitably caveated, it is made available to the public.
It is because we realise the importance of doing that that we
set up a monitoring process specifically for the knife crime action
programme that gained information from the police forces involved
and that is not actually available in any other form of national
statistics. It was that management information that formed the
vast majority of what was published as the fact sheet that went
alongside the announcement.
Q147 Tom Brake: What has happened
to the person who decided to go against the advice or the instructions
of the National Statistician about releasing those statistics?
Jacqui Smith: Let us be clear
about this. As is spelt out in a letter that Gus O'Donnell has
sent to the Public Administration Committee and copied to this
Committee, the National Statistician's specific concerns about
the one figure that I apologised to the House about were not received
until after the fact sheet was published. I have taken responsibility
for that by saying that I was too quick off the mark in publishing
the figure that related to hospital admissions and I have made
that statement in the Chamber of the House of Commons.
Q148 Tom Brake: What has been put
in place to stop it happening again?
Jacqui Smith: As Sir Gus spelt
out in his letter, first of all, there are a series of actions
that have been taken across government in terms of advice to permanent
secretaries not just with the UK Statistics Authority but also
with the National Statistician. There are within each department
a range of actions that have been taken to fulfil the requirements
of the Statistics and Regulation Act including within our Department,
for example, from last year there being a new more independent
source of statistical advice, our Chief Statistician, who has
a direct link to the National Statistician so that we are much
clearer about the way in which we need to ensure both professional
advice and transparency about statistics. Let me give an example
of the way in which that is impacting. Perhaps I could tell the
Committee that, particularly given the concerns that there were
about the quality of data collection within the most serious violence
category of the crime statistics that we introduced in April 2008,
following consultation with the Home Office Chief Statistician
and the National Statistician, I have asked the Inspectorate of
Constabulary to undertake an important quality assurance exercise
to monitor the police recording and collection of data under that
newly introduced category of most serious violence to ensure it
is being done in accordance with the Home Office counting rules.
We will also be following the advice confirmed by letter this
morning from the National Statistician in relation to the presentation
and format of the quarterly crime statistics, which are due for
publication on Thursday and which, in line with the newly strengthened
requirements with regard to government statistics, I have not
seen yet and will not see until 24 hours before they are published.
The National Statistician has advised me and my Chief Statistician
that whilst that quality assurance exercise that I put in place
is underway we should not publish the data broken down in the
way in which it was the last time that quarterly crime statistics
were published, not including that one subcategory of violent
crime, but actually include all of the figures for violent crime
and break them down instead into the categories of violence with
injury and violence without injury. So that is the publication
of statistics on all of the violent crime but with one of the
subcategories, which is the subject of the quality assurance work
that I have put in place, not separately identified within that
total.
Q149 Tom Brake: Has the UK Statistics
Authority signed off all that you have put in place and approved
so that this will guarantee no future mishaps in relation to stats?
Jacqui Smith: The role of the
UK Statistics Authority is to act rather more as a regulator.
It would not be appropriate for us to go to them to ask them to
sign off everything that we are doing. I think we are confident
that we are fulfilling what has been put in place by this Government,
which are much more strengthened and robust conditions around
official statistics both through the legislation and through the
new Code of Statistics and therefore I hope that in its regulatory
function the UKSA will recognise that that is what we are doing.
Q150 Mr Clappison: I appreciate you
made a very full and proper apology on the Floor of the House,
Home Secretary. It was not a question of the Government going
to the National Statistician as regulator, they came to you. We
are told in the letter from the Chairman of the UK Statistics
Authority, "The statisticians who produced them together
with the National Statistician tried unsuccessfully to prevent
their premature, irregular and selected release." Would you
expect that where statisticians from the Statistics Authority
to come to you again and say, "Please do not publish these
statistics yet," your Department would take note of what
the Statistics Authority says to it?
Jacqui Smith: Yes, of course they
would. That is very important in terms of the transparency and
the strength of national statistics, although I would reiterate
that I think there is a responsibility on Government, where monitoring
information is being collected, where something is of significance
to the public, to bear in mind its responsibility to share that
information with the public. I do note that there was quite considerable
discussion over the Christmas break of a set of information gathered
by the Opposition party through Freedom of Information requests
to every single police force in this country which was freely
quoted from and published in various national newspapers and fair
play to them because they were given access to it, but there was
no comment made about whether it had been through the appropriate
checking arrangements or not. There is a greater responsibility
on the Government in the publication of national statistics to
make sure that those are appropriate. I do not think we can get
into a situation where the only people that are not able to comment
on things of particular concern are Government Ministers because
of concerns around the transparency and the validity of statistics.
Q151 Chairman: Are you saying that
Mr Brokenshire's press release which quoted statistics from your
Department under the FOI was wrong?
Jacqui Smith: It did not quote
statistics from our Department.
Q152 Chairman: Where were these statistics
from then?
Jacqui Smith: As I understand
it, it was a Freedom of Information request to a variety of police
forces. Freedom of Information requests quite often bring forward
statistics before they have been through the checking process
necessary in order for them to be national statistics. Those were
statistics that have not been seen by Ministers within the Home
Office and they will not be seen until 24 hours before the publication
of the official statistics on Thursday.
Q153 Margaret Moran: This Committee
is often railing about the lack of availability of current statistics
on which to monitor whether we are creating legislation which
is effective. Given that the knife crime statistics coming out
on Thursday relate to the second quarter of 2008-09, surely it
is as important to have timely information as well as accurate.
What more can be done to speed up the process so that people can
have confidence that the information they are getting is relevant
to what is happening in their everyday lives?
Jacqui Smith: I wholeheartedly
agree with you and that was the point I was making. I think that
as Government we will be held to account for delivering on things
that are of concern to the public and we will need to provide
evidence that we are doing that. In the case of knife crime, there
are even broader public policy reasons why it is important that
people understand the true extent and the success, in my view,
that the police and their partners have had in bringing it down.
I think perhaps we need to distinguish between those things which
are official national statistics and those things which, I think
quite legitimately, are gathered as management information, where
there has to be provisos put around the status of those statistics
but where actually I think both policy development and public
understanding is supported by that information being made available
as quickly and as widely as possible both to those involved in
delivering the policy and to the public.
Sir David Normington: I think
this is a dilemma that we should put back to the UK Statistics
Authority. Not only is it responsible for ensuring valid, accurate
statistics, but I hope it also will want to encourage the availability
of information to Parliament and the public. So there is a balance
to strike here and I think there is more discussion to be had
with the Authority.
Chairman: Home Secretary, you have given
evidence for an hour and forty minutes. We are extremely grateful.
You are very generous with your time. You never refuse our request
to come here, which we are grateful for. We look forward to having
you back again in the not too distant future. Thank you both very
much indeed.
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