Charitable and Community Events

I am most grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for attending the debate. If he catches your eye, Mr. Hood, I feel sure that he will be able to develop that point. The whole House would welcome hearing from him, as it always does. He highlights no more than an anxiety throughout Devon and Cornwall. The police have suddenly discovered that they have the powers, which are nothing new, as they have been available since 1925, to squeeze more money out of a hard-pressed community that already pays taxes, and pays council taxes to the police. Communities will be charged even more if they do anything socially useful. The question may well be asked, will the police charge for antisocial behaviour? When they catch a group of young people, will they send them a charge, too? Besides a criminal charge, will there be a civil charge for the police time spent apprehending them? That would be the natural result of such thinking. The assistant chief constable in charge of operations support in Devon and Cornwall constabulary said in a letter of 3 May to the Western Morning News:"““Every force in the country is obliged under the provisions of the Police Act 1996 to charge organisers of events for all additional services provided outside core policing. This is a national policy, and one that the force cannot opt out of.””" I am sure that the Minister has taken note of that last point. The Minister knows, as I do, that that is just not true. Section 25 of the 1996 Act simply enables the police to levy charges; it by no means requires them to. It is not mandatory; it is discretionary. As the then Home Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), subsequently Home Secretary, said in a written answer on 29 November 2000:"““The decision whether to charge for costs of policing at local events is a matter for the local police authority and the Chief ""Constable… Special police services are not defined in the 1996 Act or elsewhere. I would expect them to be services that meet some or all of the following criteria:""They are not part of the general duty of the police to keep the peace and protect life and property;""The service to be provided is on private land; and,""The service to be provided is for a commercially organised event.””—[Official Report, 29 November 2000; Vol. 357, c. 683W.]" Is it right that decisions affecting the future of at least 80 annual community events in Devon and Cornwall alone should be decided at the discretion of an unelected police authority? There have been a few important judicial decisions about the legality of charging for special police services. In May, two months ago, the Court of Appeal found against the West Yorkshire police authority, because there was no written contract prior to the services provided to Reading festival, which is a large profit-making event. My concern is related to the operation of section 25 Act not in respect of large commercial events such as music festivals—Glastonbury, for example, has a £17 million turnover; it is a commercial event—or football matches, but in respect of the small, charitable, local, peaceful events that are an established and cherished part of the west country way of life. By their very definition, they do not have the resources to fight expensive legal battles that often hinge on obscure legal points. They are the quiet martyrs of the legislation. It threatens to wipe them out without recourse to appeal and without too much fuss. I would like to believe that the relatively modest nature of such events is the reason why the Government have failed to notice the reprehensible approach to police charging which is creeping in throughout many parts of the country. We would certainly hear about it if the Met landed the Notting Hill carnival with a bill for hundreds of thousands of pounds. But small events such as the Dart music festival, or Widdecombe fair, which has been going for hundreds of years, can slip easily under the radar of the public, the media and the Government. This is in no way a reflection of their importance to the local communities and how beneficial they are to our culture. I pay tribute to the Western Morning News, the regional organ of our area, which has taken up the cause wholeheartedly and exposed the number of shows, festivals and carnivals that face new charges for policing. Its excellent leader on 30 May pointed out that public support for the police is essential to help them uphold the law, and concluded that"““the force could do itself a great favour and win a great deal of public backing by announcing there will be no policing charges for such popular local events””." I fear that the police are hitting at softer targets—events with limited resources but huge social, community and cultural benefits—to help pay for policing the real problems elsewhere. That is not the way to foster good community relations and is not a practice that should be allowed to continue on an ad hoc, incoherent and inconsistent basis. I certainly do not wish to see every decision of the local police authority prescribed by central Government. I believe that it is absolutely right to keep decisions as close to the people as possible, and I am for creating real and genuine local accountability. However, I fear that local police authorities are proving far from accountable. I have still received no substantive reply to the three letters that I wrote to the chief constable of the Devon and Cornwall constabulary about the matter in April. That is not good news and does not foster good relations between Members of Parliament and the constabulary. As a result of the tremendous impact that police charges are having and will have on charitable community events in the west country and the geographical disparity in applying the legislation, combined with the opaque decision-making procedures through which charges are applied and levied, I ask the Government to bring forward clear and fair national guidelines that will ensure that charitable community events across the country are not wiped out by surreptitious police charges.