Police and Justice Bill

I am delighted to be the fourth Essex Member of Parliament to be called to speak in the debate, following very good speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) and for Harwich (Mr. Carswell), and by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Gentleman, as he eloquently expressed his reservations about the proposed mergers in Essex, and was physical testament to the cross-party campaign that we have conducted in our county against those proposals, about which we feel strongly and to which I shall return. I commend the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who spoke powerfully and with some passion from the Front Bench. He deconstructed the problems in the Bill, not least in highlighting its centralising tendency, which I deprecate but which I fear I cannot explain as eloquently as he did. Neighbourhood policing is a theme that, as the Government have stressed, runs throughout the Bill. That is fine in concept, but I have a couple of practical questions to ask about it. I will take an example from my constituency. We would all like to see more police, but in a particular area in my constituency, Hull Bridge, which is by the River Crouch, people have felt for some time that there has been a dearth of policing and, in particular, of regular patrols by regular officers. That has come through to me in my constituency postbag and, of course these days, also by e-mail, and while I have been out canvassing in Hull Bridge. It cropped up on the doorsteps so often that it was impossible as an MP to ignore the strength of feeling. As a result, last summer I organised a petition to encourage local residents in Hull Bridge to express their concern and to call for a regular policing team to be allocated to the area. That, I understand, is similar in concept to neighbourhood policing. I presented that petition of some 1,300 signatures to the House on the day we rose for the summer recess last year. I am now actively pursuing the issue with the new divisional commander who covers the area. I wrote to him about it only last week. I hope that, if neighbourhood policing is to mean something in practice, we will see local police commanders doing their best, within the constraints they face, to respond actively to local residents’ strong requests for more cover. I hope that the petition will produce a definitive result. That leads me to a related point, which I raised in an intervention on the hon. Member for Thurrock, with which I think he had some sympathy and with which I hope the Minister will sympathise, too. It is about continuity in police command appointments.In the past few years, I have seen quite a high turnover in basic command unit appointments. As I understand it, in a number of BCUs, there will now effectively be a two-tier structure—the divisional commander, who will normally be a chief superintendent, and below that a district commander. If, for example, the division covers a number of local authority areas, the district commander will be coterminous, say, with the district or borough council boundary. That is certainly the intention in one of the divisions in my constituency. Therefore, we will have both a divisional commander and a district commander. I know who the new divisional commander of one of my divisions will be, but I do not yet know who the new district commander will be. I am keen to find out. My local police have explained to me that the appointment will be made shortly and I accept that explanation, but if those people are to become well known as figureheads in their community, so that people such as MPs can make representations to them, it is important that there is some continuity in appointments and that we do not see the relatively highly turnover in senior posts that we have perhaps seen in recent years. I hope that that is a perfectly reasonable and entirely non-partisan point. I offer it to the Minister and hope that some progress will be made. Extradition has been raised by a number of hon. Members, not least in what was a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), who put his points across with his characteristic personality. An important point of principle is involved. When these powers were debated in the House not so long ago, Ministers argued that an extradition agreement of such power was necessary to fight international terrorism. That is why the House was asked to approve that measure. That is fine as far as it goes. We can look any other nation in the eye and say that we have stood shoulder to shoulder with our ally the United States in fighting the curse of international terror. There is nothing for which we should apologise to anyone. The problem, I understand, is that the United States authorities have begun to try to use that agreement in ways that clearly go beyond combating international terror. I will not stray into matters that are sub judice and raise individual cases. I understand the rules, but I am given to understand that there have been a number of occasions in the past year when the US Internal Revenue Service has attempted to use the treaty to extradite people to the United States to answer charges that they have not paid sufficient tax dollars to the United States Government. I can understand why the IRS might want to try to do that, but that is not the reason that the agreement was made. It is certainly not what Parliament was told when it was asked to approve that powerful measure. As other hon. Members have said, the United States, to add insult to injury, has not ratified the agreement at their end by passing it through the Senate. There are likely to be other occasions in the near future when the Government come to the House to ask for special powers to fight terrorism. Indeed, they did so recently when they asked for the power to detain people for 90 days. The House was not convinced of the Government’s overall argument and therefore they suffered a defeat. If the Government come to this legislature to ask for powers that restrict individual liberty in order to fight terrorism, they have a strong moral obligation to ensure that, if the House grants those powers, they are used only for the purpose for which they were requested. The danger is that, if such a situation gets worse, when the Government, whatever their colour, come to the House, perhaps in an emergency, and ask for such a strong power, the House may be reluctant to grant it. That example may be cited. I make a genuine plea to the Minister: this is an anomalous situation and it must be cleared up. Otherwise, there is a danger that, in future, the Government, whatever their colour, will be accused of crying wolf. I hope that that is not an unreasonable point and that the anomaly can be cleared up. The point has been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House and I hope that she will take it genuinely on board. I now want to discuss police authority and police force mergers. The Association of Police Authorities’ briefing for this Bill says:"““This Bill deals with proposed reforms to policing which are in addition to the merger of police forces that is currently also being considered, although to some extent the Bill anticipates elements of police restructuring.””" I am pleased that the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety is at the Dispatch Box to hear me raise this issue, because I must emphasise to her in all sincerity that there are genuinely strong feelings in my county on it. If she did not believe that before this evening, I hope that the representations that she has heard tonight from four Essex MPs leave her in absolutely no doubt. Indeed, other MPs from our county have spoken on this issue in other debates, as well. Telephone and internet polls conducted by local newspapers show overwhelming support for the view that the Essex force should stand alone. Phone-ins to Essex radio stations have produced a similar result. There is very little support at all among the general public for the Government’s proposed mergers, which is not very surprising. We in Essex have a strong sense of identity, as the Minister doubtless realises, and we do not want our policing to be performed remotely by a chief constable based in Cambridge or—dare I say it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with you in the Chair?—even in Ipswich. We want our chief constable to be based in Chelmsford, where that person can best understand the needs, security and policing of our county. We do not want the council tax to go up, because the policing precept would have to rise. Currently, we in Essex have one of the lowest precepts in East Anglia at £105 a year for band D properties. Norfolk’s precept is £145, so under equalisation our precept would undoubtedly have to rise. It is fair to say that Essex council tax payers pay enough as it is, so there is absolutely no enthusiasm for this idea on financial grounds.