PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Policing - 21 October 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Restoring confidence in policing is one of the core aims of the Government’s safer streets mission. That means ensuring robust responses to the crimes that devastate lives and corrode our communities. We are also committed to improving police standards, and will announce steps to strengthen the police misconduct and vetting system shortly.

It is almost two years since Warwickshire police issued a community protection notice against Warwickshire hunt. Eight months later, it was mysteriously replaced by a secret protocol. The police and crime commissioner, who receives financial support from the Countryside Alliance, claims that he knew nothing of the protocol. The chief constable refused to give me a copy and now she has resigned, claiming retirement. Trust in the PCC and the leadership of Warwickshire police has been seriously damaged. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the need for a truly independent inquiry, as opposed to the sham one being undertaken by the PCC?

I thank my hon. Friend and as a local to Warwickshire I take a keen interest in those matters myself. Of course, I will meet him, along with the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson). It is vital that the public can trust that those who police us, and who are in charge of our police, are held to account as everybody else should be.

Despite town and city councils in Cornwall employing street rangers and antisocial behaviour officers and having ShopWatch radios funded from their precept or business improvement districts, shop managers still struggle with shoplifting and ASB. The record under our Conservative PCC on answering and responding to 101 calls is poor, and those crimes are chronically under-reported. Shop workers feel powerless and there is a desperate need for more neighbourhood police. Can the Minister explain how trust in police and the rule of law will be restored to retail staff and shop managers?

As the Home Secretary laid out, extra neighbourhood policing is important not just because we need more police on our streets, but because when our constituents—shop workers and those who own businesses—call the police, if they get no response confidence drops. The neighbourhood police that there will be across the country, including in Cornwall, will help with confidence, not just with crime.

I thank the Minister for her answers. We have seen a toxic culture in some police services, including WhatsApp messages that are racist, homophobic and sexist, displaying deep prejudice. Will she clarify when the multiple recommendations from the Home Office review into the process of police officer dismissals will be actioned, including changing the law so that those who fail re-vetting can be more simply dismissed?

I could not agree more that we need to strengthen this area, with women especially feeling less confidence over the last few years. We will announce in due course—I promise the hon. Lady that we are working on this at pace—how we are going to ensure that police conduct and vetting systems are fit for purpose, to bring back some of the trust that has been lost.

Although I welcome the Home Secretary’s response on antisocial behaviour involving e-scooters and bikes, I wish to reiterate the concerns of my residents in Blackburn. Will she consider not only additional powers for the police but civil powers for local authorities to combat hotspot areas before somebody is seriously hurt?

As the Home Secretary outlined on neighbourhood policing, we will bring in respect orders to ensure that antisocial behaviour in particular areas is targeted in a way that it simply has not been in recent years.

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

The operational independence of the police goes to the heart of public confidence in policing. As Foreign Secretary, I saw where political interference in policing is rife, and that is not a direction that the UK should travel in, so does the Home Secretary believe that it is right for Ministers to overrule the threat assessment of the police and security services, does she believe that some free concert tickets are the appropriate price for scrapping police independence, and after the appalling results of recent negotiations with the British Medical Association, the RMT and Mauritius, has she considered recruiting Taylor Swift’s mum as a Government negotiator?

As it falls to me to answer this, let me say that the right hon. Gentleman knows fine well that operational decisions for policing fall to the police, in this situation and in every other. I would certainly welcome it if Taylor Swift’s mother stood for the leadership of the Conservative party; she would really offer something that is not currently available. The substantive question was about confidence. The confidence of women in policing, and its ability to keep women in our country secure, dived under the previous Government, so confidence definitely needs to be restored.

That does not answer the question at all.

Order. We do not want squabbles afterwards. I call James Cleverly to ask his second question.

When I was Home Secretary, on numerous occasions I had to deal with foreign VIPs demanding, or requesting, a level of protection that we did not feel was appropriate. Does the Home Secretary recognise the difficult position that she has put her own Foreign Secretary in when such future requests come in and they have to be denied, as those individuals will pray in aid the protection package put in place for a rockstar?

I remind the right hon. Gentleman and the House that concerts were cancelled in Vienna because of a terror threat that the CIA identified could harm tens of thousands of people. I sat in this very Chamber last week in front of Figen Murray—the mother of Martyn, who was killed at an event in Manchester. The idea that we should not take that security seriously is, I am afraid, something that I simply do not agree with.