Police reform and social responsibility Bill

I will be brief, because I know that other hon. Members wish to speak. August reminded us why our police service matters. In the face of the worst outbreak of rioting and arson that that this country has seen in 30 years, terrorising communities all over England, including in Birmingham, our police were truly heroic. They were the thin blue line, acting decisively to restore order in the most difficult circumstances, and they were under outstanding leadership from their chief constable, Chris Sims, a man who acted decisively not because he needed to be told to do so by politicians returning from holiday, or by putative police commissioners, but because he was going to put right a terrible wrong—the outrage of what we were seeing on the streets of Birmingham. In that process, Chief Constable Sims made it clear to Birmingham Members of Parliament that he was utterly determined to defend the British model of community policing. What was so impressive about the way he put it was this: he told us how he had become a police constable a year before the 1981 riots; how he had lived through some dramatic moments throughout the '80s, '90s and into this century, with tensions on the street and, sometimes, widespread public disorder; how he, like the rest of our police service, had learned painful lessons from the mistakes of the past; and that what the police service had done was to fashion a model of community policing that he and his fellow chief constables were absolutely determined to defend—what he called the bedrock of our ability to police more generally and to restore order in those most desperately difficult circumstances. That model is based on trust, confidence and consent, and it must never, ever be put at risk by the politicisation—of the wrong kind—of our police service, be it loose talk from Ministers of water cannon and baton rounds, which would have been exactly the wrong thing use, or this proposal to elect police commissioners. We undermine that British model of community policing, with independent chief constables able to make crucial operational decisions, at our peril and at the peril of the model itself. The proposal for the election of police commissioners is also a grotesque waste of money: £112 million to be spent on the election of 41-odd police commissioners, some of whom might well indeed be odd. That money could put back on the streets 3,000 police officers. In the west midlands, the proposal would also see one man or woman elected to cover an entire conurbation, the nature of which is very different from one end to the other, of 5 million people. The Government appear determined to plough on regardless with this proposal, as they do with the cuts to our police service—1,200 police officers will go in the west midlands. Ministers must recognise that if they want to spend money they should do so on police officers at the sharp end and on supporting them, not on elected police commissioners, not least because the impossible pressures being generated by Ministers are leading to perverse outcomes at the sharp end in the midlands. They include the revelations in the past fortnight that the police have had to use G4S to undertake major police functions, such as the investigations into the tragic killing of the three young men in Winson Green, the shooting at the Barton Arms during the riots and the murder in terrible circumstances of a 63-year-old in Northfield. Because the police are so short of key staff, they are having to use G4S, employing many ““A19”” officers to perform the same duties now as they did in the past, in circumstances where they would far rather be in a bobby's uniform than that of G4S—and at £20 an hour, which is far more than police officers would have been paid. The part-privatisation of our police service is the perverse consequence of the pressures that the Government are putting on chief constables at the sharp end. I would like any hon. Member in this House who went to the people of his or her constituency last May and said, ““Vote for me—I will cut the police””, to put their hand up. I suspect we will be waiting for that for a very long time. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said in his excellent contribution, we must work without hesitation further to improve how democratic accountability operates. At a time like this, elected police commissioners are the wrong priority at the worst possible time. I say this to Government Members, including Ministers: at the heart of this debate has been a creeping attempt by Government to undermine confidence in our police service. I know from talking to police officers at the sharp end that they strongly resent the constant assertion that they do not understand what the people in the communities they serve need and want from their police service. By working with those communities and elected police authorities, the British model of community policing sees fine men and women in uniform far more attuned to what their communities want. We put that at risk at our peril. Ministers should stop undermining the police.