It is great, and I think that the hon. Gentleman is inadvertently making my case for me that we should not be giving CS gas to volunteers who are not wearing the police uniform. My point is that we already have volunteer police officers. They are called special constables and they have the full power of a police constable and wear the uniform of a police constable. They wear the uniform with pride and they volunteer with pride, and we should be supporting the extension of the special constable programme rather
than extending powers to other volunteers, which I do not think is appropriate. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that, when people see someone in a police uniform, they do not care whether they are a special constable or a paid member of the police force. They just see them as a police officer. There is an important distinction that we must consider in examining some of the powers that Ministers are proposing. That is why we need clarity from the Minister before we decide whether to support the extension of these powers. I sincerely urge Members to exercise caution before we extend them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington also mentioned the parliamentary police service scheme. I was pleased to be able to take part in that scheme back in 2007, when I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. That seems a long time ago now. Taking part in the scheme provided an invaluable insight into the work of the police. I was posted with my own police force, Greater Manchester police, although I was a bit gutted that I was unable to go out on the beat in my own constituency. I was told that that was in case the police ended up nicking any of my constituents. I was gutted because I had a long list of people I would have liked to call on. Leaving that aside, it really was an invaluable experience. I had not appreciated just how complex the police service in an area such as Greater Manchester is. Indeed, it was not really until the end of my experience on the police service scheme that I began to appreciate not only the complexity of the organisation but how it all fitted together.
I want to talk about one experience that really changed my view of the police. Before coming to this House as a Member of Parliament, when I was a local councillor in Tameside, and following my election to this place, I took the view that the police were a pretty remote service, because when my constituents needed them, they never seemed to call on them when they were expected to arrive. On one day, I called in at Oldham police station, where I was posted on the parliamentary scheme, and was to go out on response calls with a very dedicated police officer. We looked at the computer screen and 14 jobs were waiting for the police officer. We took the job at the top of the list, but just as we were about to set off, he received a call on the radio to go to the local hospital, because a girl—a teenager of a similar age to my eldest son—had been picked up by the police and it was suspected that she had been raped at a house party.
The police officer had received Nightingale training to deal with such cases, so we did not go to job No. 1 on the computer screen; we went to the hospital. It was inspirational to see the officer’s work. He was able to get the girl to open up and to get the necessary information out of her. The father in me wanted to bash the girl around the head and say, “What on earth were you doing at that house party instead of being at school where you should have been?” That is the paternal instinct, but the police officer was so caring, gentle and professional that he was able to get the information.
That story is relevant because I was back in my constituency that afternoon at a public meeting in Reddish and one of my constituents started complaining about a neighbourhood nuisance issue in the field at the back of her house. She had called the
police at the time, but an officer did not come round. Indeed, the police officer did not come round until two days later. I had to gently remind that lady that she might have been job No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 on the computer screen—it was in a different borough, but it is just an example—and that we might have been going to head out to her when the police officer got called off on Nightingale duty. I asked her, “If that was your granddaughter, what would you think was the most important job for that police officer to go to?” She conceded that it was to go and look after the girl in hospital rather than to come and see her. That is where the public’s perception of the police’s work is out of kilter with the real pressures on the police service, not just in Greater Manchester, but across the country, and that is why we must tread carefully when considering how we move away from the traditional policing models. The development of neighbourhood policing has been invaluable, and a move away from it would be a retrograde step.
I suspect that part of the reason that the Minister has come to the House to try to extend the powers of police volunteers is to fill the gap that the Government have created. I will provide an example from my constituency. Greater Manchester lost the equivalent of five officers every week over the course of 2015 and has lost 1,445 officers since the Government came to office, which has an impact on what the police service can provide. I appreciate that this is where the Government are trying to fill the gap with volunteers, but I ask them to think carefully about how they approach the matter. If their approach—it is not clear in the Bill—is that volunteers will be trained to become special constables, that is different from a member of the public, with good intentions no doubt, being taken on by a police force and trained to a certain level, but not actually becoming a police officer. That is what most people outside Parliament will be concerned about.
I will use another local example. Back in 1998, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council—a Labour local authority —decided to complement the Labour Government’s neighbourhood policing team policy with a team of council officers called the Tameside patrollers. They were to be trained in a similar way to PCSOs, and were to wear a uniform that, although in Tameside council’s corporate colours, rather than the police colours, looked similar to a police uniform. They were also to work as part of the neighbourhood policing team.
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That all worked pretty successfully, but the council then asked the Labour Government of the day whether they could extend certain police powers to the Tameside patrollers. The Government rightly said no. The Tameside patrollers had certain powers, and there were certain powers the PCSOs were able to use in conjunction with the Tameside patrollers, but the Government said there was a real distinction between a paid employee of the police service and a paid employee of the local authority. Although the two could work in a very complementary way together, there was an important distinction to be made. That is very relevant when we discuss extending police powers to people who are not warranted police officers, who have not sworn the oath of allegiance to the Queen and who have not taken on warranted office. That is why I support amendments 10 and 11.
All that leads on to the issue of police funding, because Greater Manchester has struggled with the settlement. I do not think it is acceptable to say that, as some police areas are doing okay, everywhere should be the same, because the metropolitan areas have taken a real hit in police funding and it is having an impact on what services the police can deliver.
I wish briefly to discuss amendment 12. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington is right to say that we should not be putting volunteers who are not special constables in roles that may require the use of force or restraint—there is a distinction to be made there. That is not to say that those people are not perfectly capable of using force and restraining people, but this raises an issue about damaging policing by consent. If we have people who are not police officers doing this, whether they are voluntary or paid, that starts to damage the public perception of where the police are in communities, particularly in certain communities. Although this approach might work in parts of the country, we have to be very careful and honest about the fact that in other parts of the country there is mistrust of the police service. If we have people who are not warranted officers using undue restraint, without the checks and balances that ordinary warranted police officers have, through the police complaints system and so on, that leads to further distrust of the police service. I believe the Minister wants to increase, rather than deteriorate, trust in the police service, which is why I urge caution on some of these measures. It is also why I very much support my hon. Friend on them. We would expect these powers to be used by properly trained, properly qualified and, importantly, warranted police officers.
Amendment 13 rightly seeks the removal of what I can describe only as a barmy proposal by the Government to provide for police volunteers to be issued with CS spray and PAVA spray—I do not support that proposal. We need to be very careful here; we need to have proper, appropriate checks and balances, ensuring that the people who patrol our streets with CS spray and PAVA spray are warranted police officers. I do not think it appropriate for volunteers to have that facility. Perhaps the Minister can convince me about what the real intentions are here, and who would be expected to have the facility, but as the Bill stands it appears that that provision is available for any volunteer that a chief constable deems fit. That is too ambiguous. If we are to extend that power to volunteers, Parliament needs to be very clear about the circumstances, the conditions and the appropriate checks and balances.