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Standing Committee D
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chairmen:
Derek Conway, †Mr. Greg Pope
†Barlow, Ms Celia (Hove) (Lab)
†Blears, Hazel (Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety)
†Brokenshire, James (Hornchurch) (Con)
†Carswell, Mr. Douglas (Harwich) (Con)
†Fabricant, Michael (Lichfield) (Con)
†Featherstone, Lynne (Hornsey and Wood Green) (LD)
†Flello, Mr. Robert (Stoke-on-Trent, South) (Lab)
†Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
†Herbert, Nick (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
†Horwood, Martin (Cheltenham) (LD)
†McDonagh, Siobhain (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
†Mactaggart, Fiona (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department)
†Morden, Jessica (Newport, East) (Lab)
†Pound, Stephen (Ealing, North) (Lab)
†Pritchard, Mark (The Wrekin) (Con)
†Ryan, Joan (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury)
†Wyatt, Derek (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)
Mark Egan, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
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Tuesday 21 March 2006
(Afternoon)
[Mr. Greg Pope in the Chair]
Clause 4
Standard powers and duties of community support officers
Amendment moved [this day]: No. 134, in clause 4, page 2, line 41, at end insert—
‘(2A) In making an order under subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall have regard to the desirability of maintaining the discretion of Chief Officers to designate the powers of Community Support Officers to the extent that Chief Officers judge to be appropriate’.—[Nick Herbert.]
4 pm
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con): I was speaking before we broke about the proposal to allow the standardisation of the powers of community support officers. I was raising the question of the extent to which it is sensible to divide powers in the way proposed not in the Bill but in the consultation document. The clause will simply allow Ministers to standardise powers by order.
There is general agreement, as there was in the Home Office’s consultation exercise, that some standardisation of powers is desirable. Only 12 per cent. of respondents disagreed with that proposition. However, a range of bodies have expressed concern about whether too much standardisation is being proposed. That is what I wish to explore.
The regulatory impact assessment published by the Home Office concedes that it is intended that the vast majority of CSO powers, including the power to detain, will be made standard, leaving only a small number to be designated at the discretion of chief constables. It is that balance that has raised concerns in some quarters. The Association of Police Authorities has said that giving additional automatic powers to community support officers, particularly the power of detention, is likely to lead to their being taken off the streets and spending more time behind desks completing paperwork; and that the decision about whether or not to vest additional powers in community support officers should be a local one consistent with local policing style and strategy and not imposed from above.
The APA pointed out that its consultation with police authorities found that they supported only a minimum standard set of powers and maximum local flexibility. That view is supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which said:
“The standardisation of powers for PCSOs will bring some clarity to the public as to what PCSOs are for. However, we need to guard against them being given powers that lead to abstraction from their major role in providing high visibility contact with the
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public. More powers mean more training, equipment and office time dealing with those powers, and Chief Constables must retain discretion in how best to deploy them.”
Against that, it is fair to say that the Police Federation, which was always sceptical about the introduction of community support officers, was not in favour of giving chief officers more discretion over the exercise of their powers. However, the APA and ACPO are, and the Home Affairs Committee also said that any extension of the powers of CSOs that reduced their street presence would be counter-productive. Of course it would be.
The question is whether the balance that the Minister is proposing is sensible. I have difficulty in understanding why it is proposed to standardise some powers, yet others that seem remarkably similar are to be left to the discretion of chief officers. For instance, the power to detain beggars who have refused to stop committing vagrancy offences will be standardised, but the power to use reasonable force to detain a person making off will be discretionary. Both of those powers would require the exercise of force, and I cannot understand why one should be a definite power that all CSOs will have and the other be subject to the exercise of discretion by chief constables. The Minister says that the Bill is not about centralising policing. The right principle, consistent with that, would be to give chief police officers the maximum possible discretion in this matter.
James Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): My hon. Friend has set out interesting examples, but in many ways the issue is that we just do not know what will be standard and what will not. What we are discussing will be dealt with through order-making powers. Does he agree that it would be helpful to have some clarification of the direction of travel and confirmation of where the Government are coming from, so that we can better understand the role of police community support officers and where they fit in the overall police family? That is unclear from the Bill.
Nick Herbert: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. We seek clarification from the Minister from the standpoint that there is general support among Opposition Members for PCSOs. As I said in a debate earlier this year on the police grant, PCSOs have proved useful in reassuring the public and so on. However, there are studies, including the Home Office’s recent study, that suggest that more empirical evidence is needed to judge the effectiveness of PCSOs. One study found that it was not possible to show that they had played any role in reducing antisocial behaviour. Nevertheless, the public surveys are clear that an additional uniformed presence on the streets is valued.
The question is what the right balance is in maintaining PCSOs in a support role for the police and therefore not giving them so many powers that they almost become fully warranted officers themselves, but ensuring that they are sufficiently able to deal with the problems of antisocial behaviour in particular, for which they were deployed. It is difficult in a Committee such as this to reach a judgment on precisely which powers should be exercised by a PCSO. I would much
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rather that those decisions, within a framework that we set out, were taken, as far as possible, by chief police officers.
My amendment proposes that the Secretary of State, in exercising the power that he will be given by the Bill to designate standard powers for community support officers, should have regard to the desirability of leaving the discretion for chief police officers. That does not mean that the Secretary of State would be unable to designate standard powers for any of the offences proposed. It simply means that the balance should be shifted more towards discretion for chief officers, which ACPO and the APA want.
There is a question about the extent to which PCSOs should be able to use force at all. It is interesting that the range of offences for which PCSOs are used varies substantially among police forces. It differs from none at all in some cases to more than 40 in others. I wonder whether the Committee should test the proposition that the variation in PCSO powers confuses the public. After all, members of the public generally live in one place. Is it strictly necessary to standardise most powers, taking that discretion away from chief officers, simply to address the supposition that the public do not know what powers PCSOs have? I wonder whether the local variation matters as much as the Home Office’s consultation document suggests.
I hope that the Minister responds to my amendment in the spirit in which I tabled it. I did not want to undermine the process of standardisation that the Government propose, but to suggest that the balance should be shifted more in favour of chief officers, although in a non-prescriptive way—in a way that still allows the Government the discretion as to which powers will be exercised by all PCSOs.
James Brokenshire: I support the points that my hon. Friend has made from the Front Bench about the need for flexibility. We have said all along that the debate is about localism and ensuring that decision-making processes are as close to the ground as possible. This is an opportunity for us to clarify the role and position that PCSOs have in the wider police family.
In my intervention, I alluded to the fact that there was a degree of uncertainty about where the order-making power would lead, although the explanatory notes list the proposed set of powers and discretionary powers. Clearly, things are not currently set in stone and are subject to change. We need to see what the final order looks like.
There is an issue about the need to maintain a balance between a fixed list, which sets certain criteria, and responding to the concern that PCSOs are used as effectively as possible in the communities that they serve. My constituency experience tells me that PCSOs are most commonly the ones who are walking the beat and are the visible sign of policing. If people have issues to raise, they can speak to PCSOs because they are visible and people know who they are. They are used as a way of feeding intelligence back to the police about issues that are taking place in the wider community.
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I would be concerned if as a result of fixing a standard set of powers, that role was in some way diminished or changed. For example, safer neighbourhood teams use voluntary support: people who give up their time to support the police with a lot of the clerical duties and the behind-the-scenes work. That is an interesting development. It is good that people want to give to the community by serving the safer neighbourhood teams and dealing with some of the clerical work and the paperwork.
If the role of the PCSO was more prescribed in terms of some of the back-up work, that could lead to less time being spent out on the street, which is where we would like them to be as much as possible. We want them to work with their constable colleagues to ensure that the public are given as much reassurance as possible. We do not want the changes to create even more blurring of the role of PCSOs and that of fully fledged police constables. A distinction must be drawn. PCSOs are not policemen or policewomen on the cheap, as might be suggested. They have a distinct and more community-orientated role in feeding back intelligence; they have the relationship with their police officer colleagues to ensure that communities are better and safer places.
It is important to have clarity about the roles of PCSOs and police officers, so that the public understand how they sit together. There is a concern that people who wish to engage in antisocial behaviour understand the limitation of PCSOs and will therefore exploit the loopholes and that weakness. Therefore, there must always be a strong linkage between the PCSOs and police officers, so that we are not seen to be relying on PCSOs. We must have proper fully trained and fully fledged police officers, given that the training of PCSOs provides much more limited experience. After just a few short weeks, somebody joining as a PCSO is put out on to the streets. They are deployed quickly. That must be balanced with the need to ensure that those PCSOs are not put at risk and that they are not pushed beyond the training and support that they need to do an effective job. Also, their personal safety must not be compromised.
I welcome the opportunity to clarify the duties, roles and responsibilities of PCSOs. However, I support the amendment that my hon. Friend has tabled. It will ensure that PCSOs are kept as close as possible to the neighbourhoods that they serve. If there is a balance to be struck, it should be on that issue rather than on fixed or rigid rules that would apply to PCSOs and their duties and responsibilities.
4.15 pm
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): I am in two minds about community support officers. A friend of mine, a serving police officer, tells me that they are just policing on the cheap. He resents, although I hope the Minister will correct me if this is wrong, the fact that when someone becoming a PCSO starts on a higher salary than a new police officer. My friend maintains that another difference is that police officers have much longer training than PCSOs and argues that in certain circumstances—here I refer to the comments of
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my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch on the safety of PCSOs—they would not be able to look after themselves.
That is the bad side of the PCSO initiative. The good side, I guess, is that it is better to see someone on the streets to give reassurance than no one at all. On the other hand, that rather raises the question of whether, if we can afford it, we should not have police officers rather than PCSOs.
I support amendment No. 134 because I believe in localism, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs has spoken. It should be for individual chief constables to decide precisely what the role of the PCSO should be. This morning, we had an interesting debate on urban versus rural areas, and I learned from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Flello) that Longton police station is the busiest in England.
Mr. Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent, South) (Lab): What I actually said was that according to the inspector to whom I spoke, it is the busiest station in Staffordshire.
Michael Fabricant: That is not quite the same. Nevertheless, it sounds like the sort of place I shouldn’t visit on a Friday or a Saturday night, and perhaps not the sort of place I should visit on a Friday or Saturday morning either.
Mr. Flello: I went out with police officers from the Longton station on a Friday night, and most illuminating it was.
Michael Fabricant: Obviously, I would not make personal remarks about the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps his shape intimidated—[Interruption.] I will rephrase that: perhaps his fine stature intimidated any miscreants. The point is whether, although a PCSO might well be appropriate for patrolling the leafy lanes of Lichfield on a Tuesday morning, the hon. Member thinks that that same PCSO would necessarily have the skills to do the sort of policing that might be required on a Friday or Saturday night?
Mr. Flello: From my conversations with the inspector at Longton, I believe that PCSOs are regarded as a very important and integral part of the team. They are deployed as part of a team approach, which works extremely well. All the police officers in the Longton area regard the PCSOs as vital to the team. The hon. Member referred to where and when PCSOs are deployed. That is an operational issue that, quite rightly, is handled carefully and properly by the inspectors concerned.
Michael Fabricant: That is a helpful response. I imagine that a similar assessment is made with female police officers. I speak with a little knowledge of the issue, because my personal assistant in Norman Shaw North is a former Metropolitan police officer. She told me that after the fourth time she had a knife put to her throat, she decided it was marginally safer to work for me in the House of Commons.
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The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South made an important point when he said that it should be up to individual police officers to determine where and how PCSOs should work, just as such decisions are made in respect of female police officers, not only for the safety of those officers, but to ensure that our streets are policed safely. That brings me back, logically, to amendment No. 134, because such decisions have to be made by senior officers, perhaps including the chief officer, of a constabulary. I put it to the Minister in no uncertain terms—she looks startled, but that is how I wish to make the point—that policing in rural Staffordshire, notwithstanding what happens in the rougher parts of Stoke-on-Trent, South, is very different from that in leafy inner Birmingham.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con): I would like to put it on the record that I had a very attractive girlfriend from Longton; many good things have come out of that part of the world.
On the discretion of senior police officers, does my hon. Friend agree that they should have the discretion to appoint special constables who, unlike PCSOs, have a warrant and the power of arrest?
Michael Fabricant: My hon. Friend makes an important point. I hope that the Minister will address the issue, because I do not understand why we do not do more to encourage the recruitment of special police constables. As my hon. Friend said, they have full powers of arrest, rather than the temporary detention powers of PCSOs. Special constables might feel that they are not paid enough. Perhaps they could be paid more, at an interim level—less than the pay of a full police officer—to encourage them to play an important role. I know that late on a Friday or Saturday night in Lichfield, where we have lots of good pubs, clubs and restaurants, things can get a little hectic. If it were not for the good work of special constables, the regular police might be overwhelmed.
Mark Pritchard: The Conservative party is considering its policy on a lot of matters at the moment, and I am aware that our previous leader, my right hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), suggested an annual bounty for specials. What does my hon. Friend think, and what has the Minister to say, about a bounty similar to that offered to territorial army soldiers?
The Chairman: Before Mr. Fabricant deals with that, might I suggest that we are straying to special constables, while the debate is about PCSOs?
Michael Fabricant: That is absolutely right, Mr. Pope. All I was going to say was that I hope that, if it is in order, the Minister will address the important point raised by my hon. Friend. Senior police officers have to work with a mixture of male and female police officers, male and female special constables and male and female PCSOs. How they combine all those different law enforcers should be left to them, as stated in amendment No. 134. Without that amendment, the Bill will not allow for that degree of flexibility.
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The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety (Hazel Blears) indicated dissent.
Michael Fabricant: The Minister shakes her head, and I hope that she will explain why. However, at the moment there does not appear to be that degree of flexibility in the Bill.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD): I give the amendment cautious support, although the hon. Gentleman’s friends may have done terminal damage to the attempts of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) to project a new model Conservative party. Perhaps he will recommend a gender awareness course to them soon.
The clause adds a degree of flexibility to the role of PCSOs, which seems an admirable thing given that it is local flexibility for a chief constable who will know the local circumstances. However, it is worth reiterating that PCSOs should not be seen as policing on the cheap. That is the exact phrase that ACPO used in 2002. It said that although they had
“rapidly established a unique role for themselves within the police service,”
they were
“best seen as a complement to, not a replacement for, the role of sworn police officers.”
In ACPO’s view, only sworn police officers were appropriate in certain circumstances, such as where
“there is a clear likelihood that a confrontation will arise . . . Where there is scope for exercise of a high degree of discretion—for example, where a situation is complex owing to a number of different parties involved . . . Where police action is likely to lead to a higher than normal risk of harm . . . Where there is a clear likelihood that police action will include any infringement of a person’s human rights . . . Where the incident is one which is likely to lead to significant further work”.
Therefore, there are clear boundaries to the role of PCSOs.
Nevertheless, I generally welcome the role they play, and I certainly do so in my constituency. They are a valuable contributor to a visible policing presence on the streets of Cheltenham and elsewhere. An occasional uniformed presence, especially on foot or on a bicycle, deters antisocial behaviour or low-level crime from occurring in the first place.
Michael Fabricant: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but does he not agree that, all things being equal, people would rather see a police officer than a PCSO?
Martin Horwood: The underlying philosophy of the amendment is that there should be local flexibility. If resources being limited allows for more PCSOs on the streets, and therefore a greater visible presence, that might sometimes be preferable to spending the same resource on police officers. However, it should be a matter for local flexibility. PCSOs provide a valuable function, so long as they always have the right to call in uniformed officers when things may get out of hand. In a neighbourhood area that covers more or less the whole of the south of Cheltenham, we are likely on an average night to have only two full police officers on
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duty for the evening, and they will be in a car, so there is a perception that policing has disappeared from the streets.
Mr. Douglas Carswell (Harwich) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Minister does not accept the amendment, it will be a further example of her talking the language of localism—paying lip service to it—but not actually delivering? What we have here is an example of achievable localism, where we can have local solutions to local problems. If the amendment is agreed to, it will provide an example of real localism in action.
Martin Horwood: I think I would go so far as to agree with my hon. Friend—or the hon. Gentleman rather, since we must not push the friendship too far.
I was summing up by saying that I disagree with some of the reservations about PCSOs and that they can play a valuable role in policing, especially when resources are so stretched that in some parts of the country—certainly in my constituency—the perception is that the police have disappeared from the streets altogether, and people feel—[Interruption.] The Minister may say “pah”, but the fact is that that inspector neighbourhood area which covers the entire southern half of my constituency has only two police officers in a vehicle on duty on an average evening, and people therefore clearly perceive that police officers are simply not about at the times of day when antisocial behaviour is likely to occur. That is precisely why PCSOs can provide a useful complement to police officers, and it is why I am happy to support the amendment.
4.30 pm
Hazel Blears: I am delighted that there is cross-party consensus that police community support officers are a valuable addition to our police service. I stress the word “addition” because the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has talked about there being hardly any police about. There have been an extra 14,000 police officers since this Government came to power, and 6,000 extra community support officers.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab): My right hon. Friend refers to apparent consensus in the Committee. Is she aware that despite the fact that Chief Superintendent Neil Wain, the basic command unit commander for Stockport division, has said that he is absolutely delighted he will get new PCSOs, which will enable the neighbourhood policing model to be developed in advance of the Bill, Stockport council is putting out irresponsible scare stories that Stockport is under-resourced? Chief Superintendent Wain’s words to me on Friday made it quite clear that Stockport police are not under-resourced. What does my right hon. Friend have to say about that?
Hazel Blears: Greater Manchester police, along with every other police service in the country, have received an increase in resources. The police service as a whole has had a 50 per cent. increase in investment
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in the past few years. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s superintendent is doing a fine job in ensuring that he gets best value out of that increased investment.
There has been extensive consultation about the standard set of powers that has been proposed, and which is outlined in the explanatory notes. Some 70 per cent. of respondents to the consultation supported the idea of a standard set of powers. There was clearly some difference about the extent of that set.
The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said that he thinks the cut-off point is rather arbitrary. The powers have been carefully thought out. I personally spent a lot of time looking at the different schedules, which are designed entirely to reflect the role of the community support officer on the street, tackling low-level antisocial behaviour rather than being drawn off to deal with confrontational situations that might lead to the officer having to give evidence in court. That is not where we want them to be. We want them to be out on the streets, maximising patrol time and building a relationship with local people, schools and shopkeepers, and ensuring that they can make a significant impact. The powers mainly concern environmental issues and antisocial behaviour, such as confiscating alcohol from underage drinkers—the things that the public want CSOs to do.
It is vitally important that there is no confusion among the public. At the moment, CSO powers can vary from place to place and the public are not clear about what they can and cannot do. The fact that CSOs will have a standard set of powers does not mean that they will have to exercise all of them all the time. It will still be open to chief officers, BCU commanders and neighbourhood police team leaders to task and deploy their resources in a flexible, local way. The measure in no way seeks to dictate how they use those powers, but it is important that they have a menu of powers at their disposal to enable them to tackle the issues that the public think important. If CSOs do not have sufficient powers, people will often seek to undermine their activities. It is important that they have those powers, particularly when they are dealing with groups of people who can be fairly rowdy, and sometimes threatening and intimidating.
The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs raised the apparent inconsistency, to him, between a power to detain beggars and no power to use force to detain others. In fact, that is perfectly consistent. CSOs will not have the power to use force to detain as a standard power, but they will have the power to detain, to seek name and address and to detain somebody for 30 minutes pending the arrival of a constable if it proves necessary. The same power applies to beggars as to anyone else, so there is no inconsistency.
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