It is a great pleasure to be present on this occasion, with you in the Chair, Mr. Williams. I am extremely grateful to the Liaison Committee and to the House for allowing us to debate the Home Affairs Committee’s seventh report of the last Session, which considered the subject of policing in the 21st century. The purpose is to discuss the issues raised in our inquiry, consider developments since the report’s publication and address the Government’s response.

I welcome the new Home Office team, led by the new Secretary of State for the Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). I also welcome the new Minister who, I understand, has sought asylum from the Ministry of Justice in the calmer waters of Marsham street. It is always a pleasure to take part in a debate with the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley), who has spoken often and eloquently on policing matters on behalf of the Opposition. I also welcome the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes). I am sure that we will be joined later by other right hon. and hon. Members.

I pay tribute to the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), who did an excellent job. She was always willing to engage with the Select Committee on a range of issues, especially policing, which is right at the top of our agenda. I also pay tribute to the former Minister for policing, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), who was very willing to engage with us and Members on both sides of the House on policing issues. We wish them well on their chosen paths.

I and Committee members are immensely proud of our report. We decided to look in depth at policing, rather than conduct a one-off investigation. Members worked extremely hard to produce what I think is the Home Affairs Committee’s definitive report on policing. I thank Committee members for all their hard work. During our inquiry, we found examples of excellent practice, as well as areas that need dramatic improvement. The Committee was keen not to be confined within the walls of Westminster, so we travelled around the country looking at policing in different areas of England and Wales. I am pleased to say that we met stakeholders in places such as Newark, Reading, Monmouth, Colchester, Manchester and Stockport. All those visits provided us with an excellent opportunity to assess good practice and, in a sense, to act as a catalyst for it to be shared.

Witnesses painted an accurate picture of their personal experiences of policing in the 21st century. We heard from Sir Norman Bettison, from the Association of Chief Police Officers, and from Paul McKeever, the chairman of the Police Federation. We also heard from constables on the beat and a custody sergeant. Far too often, in Select Committee inquiries, we hear only from the top bods. In this sort of inquiry, however, it was important to look at the grass roots and the people on the front line of policing. We were pleased to see so many of them, either at evidence sessions or at our stakeholder meetings. Since the report’s publication, I have been approached by politicians, stakeholders, police officers and victims of crime who found the report refreshing and, in one view, essential reading on policing in this country. I hope that the Minister, even though he was appointed only last Thursday, has had a chance to read it and that he shares its conclusions.

The police service employs about 145,000 police officers, 77,000 police staff, 16,000 police community support officers and 14,500 special constables. It is one of the great institutions of our country and is essential to the make-up of our society. The aim of our inquiry was to establish the key challenges facing the police in the 21st century and what we need to do to ensure that they are equipped to meet them. That is set against a background of dissatisfaction among the public with the police service and among many senior officers with the increasingly broad and unwieldy role that they are expected to fill.

During the inquiry, which ran from February to July 2008, we considered the role of the police, particularly their ability to deal with 21st century social trends, including alcohol-related crime; the effects of increased immigration; their relationship with the public; funding; how to increase effectiveness through reducing bureaucracy; collaboration between forces; and making more use of police staff and other members of the work force. We drew a number of conclusions. The number of responsibilities placed on the police service expanded significantly in the late 20th century. It is now expected to deal with new dangers, such as internet-based child pornography and the terrorist threat, as well as tasks inherited from other organisations, such as victim support and monitoring sex offenders in the community. In the words of one police officer who gave evidence to us, is it really their job to take lost dogs home? We called for a fundamental review of their role.

In addition, pressure to meet quantitative Home Office targets has often caused officers to prioritise trivial offences rather than dealing with the most serious crimes. We welcome the Government’s undertaking in the policing Green Paper, which was published during our inquiry, to replace top-down targets with locally set priorities. We also encouraged greater use of officer discretion, backed by more efficient supervision. Public expectations of the police are not being met—worryingly, when last surveyed, in 2007-08, only half the population thought that the police were doing a good job, despite the continued fall in crime. The public want the police to be more active in dealing with minor crime and antisocial behaviour. We recommended that the police be more visible and responsive to the public and give greater consideration to the needs of the victim in investigating crimes. Communication is vital between victims and police, and reporting back on the progress of investigations could provide the answer to restoring public confidence in the police.

When right hon. and hon. Gentlemen visit their constituencies tomorrow, they will be visited by people with concerns about the police. Usually, the problem is that they do not know what is happening about their case—they do not usually have a complaint. With good customer service, many cases can be dealt with very quickly, without the need for people to see MPs. I hope, therefore, that by improving communication we can cut the time taken to deal with complaints about how the police handle their job.

Government grants to the police have increased by 19 per cent. over the past decade. Overall police spending was estimated at £12.6 billion in 2007-08. However, a number of functions are putting particular pressure on police resources. Foreign nationals take longer and cost more for police forces to process than British citizens. Rapid immigration has led to funding shortfalls in some areas. The Government must give greater assistance to forces in areas experiencing rapid population change.

We discovered that a huge amount of police time and money is spent dealing with alcohol-related crime. Changes in the licensing laws mean that forces have to deploy officers for longer. We conclude in our report not that the change in the licensing laws had resulted in more crime, but that the work load of the police had increased because pubs and clubs were open for longer. Some 45 per cent. of victims of violence describe their assailants as being under the influence of alcohol, and 70 per cent. of police officers believe that attending alcohol-related incidents diverts them from tackling of crime.

We supported the principle of mandatory contributions to policing from alcohol retailers; we advocated that the practice of loss leading should be ended; and we felt that it was important that there should be compulsory, and not voluntary, standards for the alcohol industry. I welcome the Government’s recent steps to ban irresponsible drinking promotions, such as, “All that you can drink for a fiver”. I will explain later why more should be done. The Committee was keen not to be seen as a killjoy or as being responsible for the death of the happy hour. However, irresponsible drinking can turn into “unhappy hours” for victims of alcohol-related crime. Drinking responsibly is not a crime and should not be treated as such, but something must be done to prevent the huge drain on our public services, which is happening because of irresponsible drinking.

Faced with tight funding, the police need to identify ways to free up resources. We were disappointed at the lack of progress in reducing police bureaucracy. Witnesses estimated that officers spend around 20 to 30 per cent. of their time completing paperwork, and the average officer spends only 14 per cent. of their time on patrol. We welcome plans for shorter crime-recording forms and new processes for digitally recording stop and account. We were invited by a member of our Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean), to visit Staffordshire police, which reduced its crime-recording form from 14 pages to one, which it estimates saves officers 20 to 25 minutes per form. The use of personal digital assistants in Bedfordshire has increased visible patrols from 14 to 19 per cent. for each officer. All frontline officers should be given PDAs.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the Staffordshire experience and the three other forces that piloted more officer discretion and shorter, sharper crime recording practices, was that work utilised in other forces?

As Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, I have made it my practice to write to the Home Secretary about the things that I think should and should not be shared with other parts of the country. In this case, I wrote to the then Home Secretary to suggest that the practice should be followed in every single force. It is not necessary to wait for pilots. As someone once said, “We have in Government more pilots than British Airways.” If something works practically, it is essential to do it everywhere. I am not sure whether I got a reply from the former Home Secretary, but I am sure that the Minister will let us know whether that practice has been taken beyond the pilot areas. I certainly found the practice—and I know that the hon. Gentleman must have found it—extremely useful.

We supported the greater use of non-warranted police staff in areas in which it is cost-effective, but not to the extent that the number of police officers required for maintaining public order is significantly reduced. Initially, the arrival of PCSOs was treated with concern by some police officers, but now they are a vital part of the local police service. It is important that we give credit to the police for the way they have worked so closely with PCSOs when, initially, there was concern from organisations such as the Police Federation.

Regional collaboration on sharing services to cut costs works well in some parts of England and Wales, but progress elsewhere is too slow. There also remains a gap in the provision for tackling serious and organised crime. I am pleased to say that the Committee is shortly to hold an inquiry into the Serious Organised Crime Agency. At the same time, it will examine the work done by Europol, which is now led by a dynamic young British former police officer, and which celebrates this year its 10th anniversary.

We did not support forced mergers as a solution, but we felt that if regional and local police forces wish to collaborate, they should be allowed to do so. As a local MP, I do not want to see my police force in Leicester being run from Nottingham, which is probably where it will end up. For some reason, everything is always put in Nottingham rather than in Leicester or Derby. I am very happy to see police forces collaborating, but I do not want to return to the policy of forcing mergers, because it was unsuccessful.

We found no evidence of a drop in the number or quality of police officer applicants. Officer posts attract, on average, six applicants. However, we had some concerns over retention, especially in the south-east. Regional forces lost 1,038 officers to the Metropolitan police over the previous five years. That is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) successfully highlighted to the Committee.

As for the rest of the work force, we advocated greater standardisation in the deployment of PCSOs and consideration of whether they could be granted some powers of arrest in very exceptional circumstances. We did not advocate affirmative action, but we were concerned about the lack of Government progress on the diversity targets set by the Government themselves under a previous Home Secretary, now Lord Chancellor, following the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. We felt that greater efforts should be made to encourage more people from the ethnic minority communities and more women into the senior levels of policing in this country.

Finally, we concluded that the Home Office should give back more control over policing decisions to local forces, which would result in a bottom-up approach to policing. There should be greater accountability of policing to the public at a local level. However, we were clear that proposals originally put forward by the Home Office to restructure police authorities did not meet that need and threatened to undermine the partnership that was already working between the police and local authorities as well as having the potential to be exploited by extremist parties.

Following our representations to the Government, in the report and in a letter following the one-off session that we held in December, we were delighted to hear that the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redditch, withdrew her proposals to introduce direct elections to police authorities. Instead, the Policing and Crime Bill, which has reached Committee in another place, inserts into the Police Act 1996 a requirement for police authorities to have regard to the views on policing of the people in their area. We were pleased that the Government strongly welcomed our report and that the then Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, was able to appear before us in March to give us an update on the recommendations. However, we are disappointed that the Government have failed to take up our recommendations in a few key areas, notably around minimum pricing for alcohol.

The Government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has since proposed the introduction of a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol, which would mean that a standard bottle of wine could not be sold for less than £4, a 2-litre bottle of cider for less than £5.50 and the average six-pack of lager for less than £6. He considered such a move could, after 10 years, lead to 3,400 fewer deaths and 100,000 fewer hospital admissions a year, and that it would also have a significant impact on crime rates. Alas, the Government did not follow the medical advice of their own chief medical officer. The Policing and Crime Bill introduces some measures towards reducing alcohol-related harm—for example, it increases the maximum fine for consuming alcohol in a designated public place—but the Committee feels that they are not sufficient. I am sure the Minister will give us more information. We welcome what the Government have done so far, but we believe they need to go much further.

Since our inquiry, the UK has fallen into a recession and there are concerns about the potential impact on crime levels and speculation about capping the numbers of officers. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that no cuts will be made to the police force in England and Wales in the foreseeable future. The chief constable of Gloucestershire, Dr. Timothy Brain, who gave evidence to the Committee in March, described what tends to happen during recession. He told us that during the second half of the 1970s through to the mid-point of the 1980s, crime rose by about 124 per cent.

The police have received record funding in the past decade; we must ensure that police forces continue to be properly resourced to meet the challenges. We were therefore concerned to hear of the problems faced by some forces—they were described to the Committee as second-tier forces—that are losing out because of the police funding formula. The new chief constable of West Midlands police, Chris Sims, warned last week that officer and staff numbers are likely to be cut. The Home Secretary must take heed of Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s recommendations on the formula.

Capping is also causing some forces concern: Surrey police authority is seeking a judicial review of a Government decision to cap its budget, which resulted in a loss of £1.6 million; Derbyshire police authority is also planning an appeal to the Government against future budget restrictions; and Leicestershire police narrowly escaped being capped last year. Forces should never be in a position in which they may have to cap their budget. This Government have done so much for policing. Surely we should ensure that the situation does not come to cuts in our forces.

I know that the Minister is concerned about his budget, but I say this to him: the National Policing Improvement Agency has spent £70 million on consultants at the same time as police forces have to cut officers. That is simply not acceptable. The funding difficulties make it imperative that the police operate as efficiently as possible. It is estimated that officers spend around 20 to 30 per cent. of their time on paperwork.

The previous Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, told us in March that 26,188 hand-held devices had been issued to police forces across the country as part of the Government’s target of delivering 30,000 devices by March 2010. Jan Berry’s lead on reducing bureaucracy in the police provided the Committee with an excellent framework to investigate that further—it is impressive that someone can go from marching with 100,000 police officers and support staff through the streets of Whitehall and end up becoming the Government’s tsar on cutting red tape, but we welcome her appointment and look forward to her report. My own local constabulary, Leicestershire, recently deployed hand-held devices to 450 beat officers and PCSOs who patrol on foot or bicycle after discovering that officers were spending at least one third of a nine-hour shift at their desks accessing or recording information on the computer systems. The Committee and I want all front-line police officers to have access to a mobile device.

We were pleased to be assured that our concerns about capacity issues on the Airwave radio network, which is now used by all officers, are being taken seriously, particularly in the light of the forthcoming Olympics. However, in an article in Jane’s Police Review last week, Barrie Trower, an independent research physicist, predicted that Airwave users could be at risk of thousands of slow-growing brain tumours. The Minister has just taken up his post, but I hope that he can assure us that there are no health dangers with Airwave.

The Committee continues to scrutinise the work of the police and in the next 10 days we will publish our report on the policing of the G20 protests. I hope that it will recommend positive action for the police to take in response to the criticisms they have received.

I am sure that the House will be aware of the disturbing news this week that police officers allegedly tortured suspected drug dealers during questioning. I hope that the Minister ensures that those allegations are investigated quickly and that they are responded to with the appropriate action. As I am sure he knows, if he does not do that, the Committee will—it is very willing to hold further inquiries.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Minister and the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds and for Chesterfield for their presence here today, and members of my Committee for their work. I hope that the Government continue to take our conclusions and recommendations into account in working towards delivering a first-class police service that will be fit for purpose in the 21st century.

I congratulate the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), on his usual excellent work. I have already heard him speak on policing once this week. He is always assiduous in chasing issues in Parliament that relate to his Committee’s work. I also congratulate the members of the Committee on their contribution.

The report is a superb example of exactly what Select Committees are supposed to be about. It is a tour de force, if you will excuse the pun, Mr. Williams. It looks ahead at the policing issues that will be relevant in the 21st century. Select Committees are good at producing such work. I declare an interest as someone who has been a member of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, which was formerly the Education and Skills Committee, for most of the past eight years, so I have seen the process from that side of the fence. Select Committees are excellent because their reports are largely impartial. Obviously politics gets in the way sometimes but by and large, in my experience, including from reading reports by Committees with which I was not directly involved, Committees tend to avoid the pitfall of politicisation. They tend to be impartial and to fulfil the hope that was behind them when they were set up in their strengthened form in the great reform of 1979.

Select Committee reports are not Government reports—the information is not obscured by or filtered through the Government or the civil service—and they are not Opposition reports that are written purely for political purposes. Committees take a huge raft of evidence from expert witnesses of every variety. For example, a section of the Home Affairs Committee’s report deals with alcohol. Although the Committee heard from the alcohol trade, which obviously had a certain point of view on minimum pricing and controls on pubs, it also heard from the police, community bodies and local authorities. Committees produce excellent, up-to-date summaries of expert opinion on issues, and their reports are presented coherently and concisely. They provide ammunition for a two-hour parliamentary debate such as this, but they will also be referred to over and again for years to come. This report will be referred to every time policing is raised in Parliament, during elections and in the press. Select Committee reports rumble on for many years after they are produced.

As I said, the report is an excellent, outstanding example of what Select Committees do so well. There is a lot of talk at the moment about reforming how this place works, and we have heard various suggestions even in the last day or two about how to strengthen Select Committees. I hope that we go a long way down that path so that Select Committees can better fulfil their potential.

I will not try to cover every aspect of the report—the Chair of the Committee, in his excellent summary, could only scratch the surface—but I will pick out some things that particularly stood out for me. One, which has already been referred to, was the general issue of targets and expectations for the police in the 21st century, the situation on which has been both improved and worsened by the advent of modern communications, the internet and rapid communication such as e-mail.

People now expect a much faster, if not instantaneous, response. They send a complaint by text message or e-mail to their beat officer at the appropriate address and want an immediate response. MPs have had the same experience, as the volume of casework has increased massively for MPs and councillors in local government. It has put a lot of extra pressure on the police. In some ways, that is quite right, because it makes the police more accountable, but in other ways it raises people’s expectations and they can be easily disappointed.

There is a danger that some legislative changes concerning community calls for action are creating more expectations for the police—and on local councillors in partnership—to do something. If the residents of a council ward make a community call for action, they want the police and local authority to do something immediately. If the resources are not there and the police cannot respond immediately, there will be disappointment. Those issues are highlighted in the section of the Committee report dealing with what the police do, what is expected of them, what targets are being set for them by central Government, and what local residents are demanding.

One interesting point about recorded crime that stands out is the question whether the crime situation is getting worse. All the statistics tell us that the position on crime is getting better. Page 10 of the report cites an interesting statistic.

“Changes in society led to a steady rise in recorded crime levels between the 1950s and the 1990s, with recorded crime per officer increasing dramatically in the 1980s from an average of 26 crimes per officer in 1982, to 42 per officer in 1992. This figure has since remained fairly constant.”

It is instructive to bear those bald statistics in mind. Crime rose steadily in the UK and the western world from the 1950s onwards—it did not particularly matter who was in government. The Conservatives were in government for 13 years from 1951 to 1964. In the later ’60s, there was a Labour Government, and then there was the Conservatives again, then Labour and then the Conservatives for 18 years. Now we have had Labour for 12 years. However, crime figures went up steadily—with some dramatic jumps, as in the 1980s—for the best part of half a century in the western world and the UK. Across the western world, they have tended to level off or decrease, as with the famous example of New York, which some people attribute directly to zero-tolerance policing and others simply explain by pointing out, “Well, you’ve got a change in age demographic in the population of the USA, and crime has gone down all over the country, regardless of whether there has been the zero-tolerance approach of New York policing.” When we try to apply those lessons to English policing, we need to bear those statistics in mind, rather than following the knee-jerk reactions in the headlines. The newspapers tell us that we are in the midst of the worst crime wave ever, even though the statistics, as evidenced in the report, do not bear that out.

Equally, the report asked the valid question whether we can always trust the stats. The public certainly do not. As the report points out, only a few months ago, in 2008, we discovered that some police forces had not been recording certain types of criminal offence in the right category, which meant that the number of crimes of serious violence, far from falling, should have jumped by 20 per cent. That was due simply to errors or differences in how police forces collected the stats.

That situation makes the clear case that we must take the collection and presentation of statistics on sensitive issues such as crime out of the hands of the Government—they must not be seen to be political or be changed for political purposes—and put that into the hands of an independent body. In that way, I hope, we would get to a point at which the public and the media would trust the stats, instead of saying, as the public so often do, “Well, your statistics might show that crime has been falling fairly steadily, but we don’t believe it. We think it’s much worse—although not around here.” As the report points out, people say that they think the crime situation is quite good where they live, but that it is generally bad. It is the same for education. Lots of people say, “Schools are really bad these days, but the one my children attend is very good”. Indeed, recent surveys show that people say, “Members of Parliament are all crooks, but my local MP is actually quite good.” We need objective statistics in which people can have a bit more trust.

The question of what the police do has been raised. I was struck that the borough commander of Hackney police, Chief Superintendent Steve Dann, asked what the police were there for and what the public and the politicians wanted them to do.

“I think we need some clarity around that…Why do we take lost property? Why do we take lost dogs? Is that what we should be doing?...You have some people saying: ‘Enforcement. Let’s enforce. That is your job’; other people are saying we should be in prevention, education”

and community outreach. Where is the balance between all those things?

I have a local example of what is happening throughout the country. In the past few months in Derbyshire, we have seen a shift in the enforcement of minor traffic legislation, such as that on parking and so forth, because it has been taken away from the police. They had often said, “We haven’t got the time to do that. We have other, more pressing demands on our attention,” but people in some places were getting irritated that local parking regulations were not being enforced.

As across the country, therefore, enforcement in Derbyshire has gone to the local authorities—the county councils and the boroughs and districts in collaboration—and they have put it out to a private organisation known as the “green giants”, because of their new green uniforms. Since they took over from the police a few months ago, they are much more visible and enforce the rules and regulations more proactively. Some motorists are not happy about that, because they are now being prevented from parking illegally, but lots of residents are happy about it, because residents parking and similar measures are now being enforced, whereas before the police would just say, “We haven’t got the time to do that.” Chief Superintendent Steve Dann’s comments are apposite. We need to talk to the public, politicians at all levels and the media to ask what we expect the police to do.

On the issue of Government directives about what the police should do, we see the same tension at a much higher level. On the one hand police forces have been told, “You’ve got to look very carefully to assess crime threats, serious crime and the terrorist threat. You’ve got to have more collaboration”—perhaps involving the super-forces that were mooted but have, thankfully, been dropped recently—“so that you can tackle the most serious forms of crime, like terrorism and organised crime.” On the other hand, we want much more neighbourhood policing and a greater uniformed officer presence out on the streets to tackle what members of the public are most concerned about: low-level, everyday crime such as vandalism, petty nuisance and drunkenness in the streets. We need more clarity on who decides the priorities and to restore much more local control and accountability.

Some of the evidence in the Select Committee’s report made those points extremely well. Brian Paddick, a former assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan police, said:

“The problem with the Home Office was nationally imposed targets, some of which were having perverse outcomes”,

although they were set with the best of intentions. He continued:

“For example, in terms of offences brought to justice, I am sure the Committee will realise that it is one point on the score board for a complex case of murder which might take 18 months to investigate and six months to try in court, provided there is a conviction that counts as one offence brought to justice”,

but it is also one point for

“a cannabis warning that takes 20 minutes to deal with”.

If police are getting pressure from the centre as well as from the inspector who assesses police forces—if they are being told, “You’ve got to have so many cases brought to justice. Why are you behind the national average? Why are you behind your target?”—there is an inevitable pressure, as in education with league tables and Ofsted inspections, to work to the target and do the things that tick boxes, even if that is not the best example of how policing should be done in a particular area.

Some might point out that at the time when Brian Paddick gave that evidence, he was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London, but Chief Superintendent Dave Hudson of Essex police made exactly the same point in his evidence. His division

“had a daily target of 20.5 ‘sanction detections’, with the same weighting accorded to every detection, regardless of the seriousness of the offence.”

The more serious the offence, the longer it takes to investigate and prosecute, and the more trivial the offence, the easier it is to deal with, but the two get exactly the same weighting. That is a consequence—unforeseen, I am sure—of a Government initiative to hold police forces to account.

How should police forces be held to account? That is where there is a need to go back to local control and accountability, not through the elected sheriff model that the Conservative party talks about, and on which its spokesman will doubtless elaborate later, but through locally elected police boards. That is not the macho individual in charge of everything, who gets the headlines and creates a stir, but a more responsive, democratic model, through which the local electorate, rather than distant central Government in London, can hold things to account.

I am following what the hon. Gentleman says with great interest. The current system might well be okay, but the problem is the visibility of members of the police authority. The public do not feel that the police are held to account. The system of an elected police authority exists, and individuals are elected or appointed by councillors, who appoint one of their number to the authority—it is usually chaired by a councillor. However, the authority and the people on it are invisible, rather like people on primary care trusts or health authorities. They are on those bodies to represent the public, but the public do not know who they are.

I agree absolutely, because that is why some people have said, “What is wrong with the existing police authority board? The structure is already there.” The authorities will now say, “We are making much more effort these days to go and talk to the people in our area.” The Derbyshire police authority does a good job. It has been incredibly proactive in holding parish hall meetings all over Derbyshire to consult the public and explain what is going on. There is now online crime mapping, as well as other initiatives, and a lot of local response and consultation, but how many people turn up to the meetings, and how many feel that they have a direct input?

Most members of the police authority have been appointed in one way or another. Even the third—I think that is the proportion—who are elected councillors have been elected to other authorities, such as the county, district or borough council, and then co-opted on to the police authority. There is no direct line of accountability. That is why we suggest that there should be proper, elected police boards rather than appointed quangos—even if part of the quango is elected in some way. There should be a directly elected and directly accountable authority, but not a single, macho, elected sheriff.

The hon. Gentleman is giving a very considered précis of Liberal Democrat policy, but just so that I can be clear about this point, would the election to the boards that he describes be by proportional representation? If so, what lessons does he draw from the election of the British National party to various county council seats in the past few days?

The first point would be that the election of the BNP to a tiny number of county council seats happened under first past the post, not proportional representation. I do not have any sympathy with the idea that the democratic process should be rigged to exclude certain people, rather than that they should be defeated in democratic argument. People with extreme political views may get elected under any electoral system. As I have said, most of the success of the BNP—it has been very small in the past 10 or 20 years—has happened under first past the post. We cannot change the electoral system to prevent people from getting elected. If enough people want to elect a certain group of politicians, that is democracy—it is what democracy is all about. It is the job of politicians in the main parties to put across the arguments and policies to prevent that from happening.

Order. Perhaps we can get back to debating the police.

I apologise, Mr. Williams, but the matter is directly relevant to the aspect of the Select Committee report that we are discussing and the question of how to get necessary accountability. The Liberal Democrats would want proportional representation for police boards, as for every election, but the question is what sort of proportional representation to use. Opponents always choose the worst example they can think of, such as the Israeli list system or the closed list system for the European Parliament. That is not the method that any sensible person who wants PR would suggest. The single transferable vote that was adopted a few years ago with massive success by New Zealand, which has an English-style democratic system, is exactly what we would propose, not the bad systems that people hold up as an example.

The question of directly elected boards and how to hold the police to account leads on to the section of the Select Committee report about resources and how to finance the police. At the moment, as the report clearly and succinctly explains, most funding for the police, like most instruction for the police, comes from London. We are one of the most centralised countries in the western world. Some 90 per cent. of taxation is raised by No. 11 Downing street. It goes, effectively, to No. 11 Downing street, and is handed out with strings attached. No other western country works in that way. Other countries raise money locally and spend it locally on police, education, health and other things, and need not ask the capital city for permission to do so. We are the exception, as with PR. The Liberal Democrats argue that the resources issue should be dealt with differently, which is why we want locally elected police boards. We do not want them just so they can do what police authorities do now. We are thinking about much more powerful local police authorities with power over the raising of finance.

The Select Committee report sets out clearly why such reform is needed. Although there is variation across the country—I think that the figure is as low as 50 per cent. in Surrey—most police forces, like most local authorities, get anything up to 70 or 75 per cent. of their funding as grant from central Government. Only 20 to 30 per cent. comes from the local council tax precept that the police authority sets. That has led to some immense problems for police forces. I mentioned Surrey, and there was a debate two days ago in Westminster Hall on the Surrey capping issue, during which I managed to make some contributions with reference to the Derbyshire comparison that has already been raised. The Government hand out most of the money, give most of the directives to the police about what they must do, and set most of the targets that they must meet, but they use a formula that they admitted in 2006 was inadequate and unfair, leading them to introduce a new formula based on need. They then said that they could not introduce the new formula, and thus told Derbyshire, “You need £5 million more a year if you are to deliver the policing that we, the Government, say you should, but you cannot have it.”

As the Committee’s report points out, some authorities have been even worse hit. It points out that the West Midlands force received nearly 11 per cent.—£48 million—less than the funding formula would have given it in 2007-08, if that formula had been applied. The Government said, “You need all this money, but you cannot have it.” Yet another force, Northumbria, gets 12 per cent. more than it should, according to the central Government funding formula. The system of ceilings and floors—to ensure that change takes place relatively slowly and that all an authority’s surplus money is not taken away immediately to be given to an underfunded one—is understandable if there is a sensible and logical time scale in which the funding schemes are brought together so that everyone is funded equitably. However, that is not happening. It is happening for fire authorities and, to some extent, for local authorities, but not for police authorities.

Quite a number of authorities, including Derbyshire, have been told, “You are badly underfunded and need more money than you get to do your job. When we send inspectors to assess your police force, we will assess you against forces that are being paid more money than they need to do the job, and we will criticise you because you are not doing your job properly, even though you are underfunded. Who is underfunding you? We are—central Government. What can you do about it? Nothing.” That is because if an authority tries, as Derbyshire has done this year with support from MPs and councillors of all three parties, and as Surrey has done, to raise the money from the council tax precept, the Government caps it.

Derbyshire is not being forced to rebill this year, which would waste large amounts of money to save slightly larger amounts, but it is being informed that it will lose the relevant amount next year, so it is being told, “We are not going to take the money off you this year; we’ll take it off you next year.” Derbyshire must lose £1.6 million, but that amounts to 60 front-line police officers losing their jobs to meet the Government’s council tax capping directive. I am not the one who says so; it is Mick Creedon, the chief constable of Derbyshire. Surrey is in an even worse position and other authorities, such as Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, went through the process last year. It is a problem across the board.

The rationale that the Government gave in the debate two days ago for what they were doing was very confused—they said that Derbyshire, for example, was setting an excessive budget. The extra money on the council tax would have raised about £1.6 million, but the Government have said that Derbyshire police are £5 million underfunded. How can raising an extra £1.6 million towards a £5 million underfunding be an excessive budget? It still does not reach the spending that the Government say is needed. It is ludicrous and illogical—and completely undemocratic. Derbyshire and Surrey police authorities, and others last year, consulted their council tax payers and all the different councils and elected bodies at different levels, as well as getting MPs from different parties on board, and central Government said, “You cannot do this.” There is an utter dislocation between local police forces and the Government, who told them that there must be localism, that they must be accountable to local people and that they must do what local people want.

People in Derbyshire want police on the beat. They do not understand why Derbyshire has 380 fewer people in uniform on the streets than an equivalent shire county, or why some have more people on the beat because they have been given the money that should have gone to Derbyshire. However, Derbyshire cannot do anything about that. It cannot raise the money through local taxation, even if local people are willing for that to happen, because the Government say no. There cannot be localism and police forces cannot be accountable to the local area if that is not allowed to happen. That is why we must change completely the resourcing of police forces.

There must be local accountability. That is why we argue that police authorities cannot continue to be, in effect, appointed quangos, albeit some of their members have been elected to other authorities. There must be properly elected police boards to deliver the finance and local accountability that the Government say is needed, but prevent from happening, and towards which the Select Committee report shows in admirable detail and clarity we should move.

The immigration and foreign workers section of the Select Committee report was interesting, if only for one sentence. The evidence shows that the policing issue related to immigrant workers and communities—contrary to public or media opinion—is that

“foreign nationals are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime.”

In areas such as Chesterfield, where significant groups of eastern European workers have arrived in recent years, the cost of providing interpreters is a great burden on police forces, especially given the range of languages that are spoken. However, they are more likely to be interpreting for a victim of crime than for somebody who has been charged with committing a crime.

Government funding for interpreters is too slow and ineffective to meet the problem. It is based on the 10-yearly censuses, so it does not take account of quick population movements. Only two years ago, a large number of eastern European workers came to this country. Many of them are now leaving because of the recession, or because they have earned the money they wanted to raise and are going back to set up businesses in their home countries. We benefit from their work and the economy in places such as Poland will benefit in return, which is what the European Union is all about.

The Government funding formula does not respond to the problem of the cost of interpreters quickly enough. We see the same problem in education, housing and elsewhere. It was worth pointing out just that one sentence of the Select Committee report to show that foreign nationals are more likely to be the victims of crime than the cause of it. However, the problem of the cost of interpreters must be dealt with.

Alcohol has been dealt with today by the Chairman of the Select Committee, and it has been discussed at length during the passage of the Policing and Crime Bill and in other debates. There is a missed opportunity. The 24-hour café culture that the Licensing Act 2003 envisaged has not come about. Instead, we have more drinking in town centres and it is more spread out. The police used to need extra numbers on duty from 11 o’clock at night to 2 o’clock in the morning on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. That police presence must now be spread out right through to 6 o’clock in the morning. That is the experience in Chesterfield, and it causes more difficulties for policing and makes it more expensive.

According to my local police and the evidence given to the Policing and Crime Bill Committee, the main problem is not town centre drinking venues and the results of the Licensing Act 2003, but under-age drinking. The problem is cheap booze in off-licences and off-premises, with cheap super-strength lagers and ciders being sold at rock-bottom prices as loss-leaders to get people into supermarkets. Regrettably, the Government sidestepped that problem in the Policing and Crime Bill. There is much talk of strengthening powers to control licensees and pubs, but in that proposal, too, there is far too much direction from London, instead of local authorities being able to decide where the problems are. Local authorities know their areas far better than anybody sitting here in London. All the emphasis has been on that issue and there has been nothing about stopping super-strength, cheap booze getting into the hands of under-age drinkers on the streets so easily.

Whenever I am on patrol with the police, police community support officers and special constables in Chesterfield, I ask what is the biggest source of problems. They always say that it is the early-evening nuisance around the high streets, shopping centres and play areas where kids congregate with cheap, super-strength booze that they have bought from off-premises. It is much harder to control that problem than town centre pubs, because it is scattered across the community.

The Government seem to be closing their eyes to that problem, as the eloquent testimony of the Chairman of the Select Committee showed. I agree with the Select Committee recommendations on alcohol disorder zones and the “polluter pays” principle, under which the pubs and all-night drinking establishments that cause these problems should help to pay to solve them. I also agree with minimum pricing and the control of loss-leading sales of cheap alcohol. Unfortunately, the Government seem to be avoiding tackling these issues.

What I said in my opening comments is also true of knife crime. Although crime has been falling, nobody believes the statistics. Many people have a fear of crime, but they do not read the statistics. The statistics on knife crime, if they can be believed, show that it has slowly decreased over the past seven years. However, especially after last year’s feast of press coverage on some of the tragic murders, everybody believes that knife crime has soared through the roof. In truth, the press suddenly paid major attention to these tragic deaths, having not done so for the previous six years. There was a debate about knife crime in the main Chamber on Tuesday, which was repeated in part in yesterday’s debate on youth crime in this Chamber, in which I participated. Nobody disputes the seriousness of the issues and the need to deal with knife crime, but the interesting statistics in the report suggest that knife crime is in slow decline rather than soaring through the roof.

There has been much discussion in the debates of the past two days of how we should deal with knife crime. Intelligence-led policing is one method, and there are good examples of that in the past 18 months in London. Targeted stop-and-search powers have been used in problem areas, and mobile arch metal detectors have been used. On a recent Select Committee visit to New York, we saw those arches in use at the entrance of every school that we visited. We are a long way from having to go down that road, but the use of mobile arches and intelligent stop-and-search powers has a big role to play, as long as we never go back to the heavy-handed days of the sus laws, which caused such problems in the 1970s.

One example of intelligence-led policing that has been mentioned in recent debates comes from Cardiff, where the accident and emergency unit logged anonymous reports of exactly where stabbing incidents occurred. Such schemes can cause many problems, as the medical profession does not want to report all stabbing and gunshot incidents to the police because of issues such as patient confidentiality. However, in Cardiff, incidents were reported anonymously. The police used the information not to pursue individuals, but to create a crime map and identify where the stabbings were taking place. They then diverted resources into the problem areas. In Cardiff, there was a 40 per cent. reduction in knife crime and stabbings simply through sensible, intelligence-led policing. The use of computers to analyse hot spots on weekby week has worked well in other areas of policing.

Regrettably, although the Government have looked at that experiment and introduced some pilots—we have heard that they have more pilots than the Air Force—it has not been rolled out. It is such an obvious and simple technique and has been proven to work. It means that less police time is wasted, because efforts can be targeted most effectively. Why are successful examples, such as the one in Cardiff, not being adopted more widely?

We discussed this matter in Tuesday’s debate in the main Chamber, so the hon. Gentleman knows that the Government have spoken to the consultant involved in the Cardiff example, who addressed the ministerial group dealing with the tackling knives action plan. From memory, we have increased the number of hospitals in knife crime action plan areas that use data sharing to about 45 or 46. The Government have focused on those key areas, because knife crime is not a problem in every part of England and Wales. Data sharing should be used where it is appropriate, which is in areas that have a high level of knife crime.

They are welcome steps forward, and that comes into what I am going to say about the use of personal digital assistants.

We are moving in the right direction, but I wonder why it has taken so long, given the successful examples that have been shown to work so well. A 40 per cent. reduction in stabbings is a win-win result: the health service saves money because it does not have to treat those people, the police save money because they are able to target particular areas and reduce knife crime, and society as a whole benefits because there are not lurid newspaper headlines about yet another teenager being stabbed and perhaps dying, so everybody wins. The same approach could be applied in accident and emergency units when people are drunk and disorderly, and when incidents of grievous bodily harm have occurred, to pinpoint the pockets where trouble arises. I hope that there will be more widespread use of that approach. It requires joined-up government down to local authority level, with areas such as health and policing pushing together get that kind of collaboration.

We have heard about police time, so I shall deal with that quickly. It is a long-standing and perennial cry that the police spend all their time filling in bits of paper instead of being out on the beat. Indeed, there are reports from 30 years ago saying that. However, there is certainly lots of evidence that has been true in the past few years. The Flanagan recommendations on revising the stop-and-account process under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 are very welcome. We heard the Staffordshire example about cutting down a form from 14 pages to one, which is an obvious thing to do.

When I went out on patrol with some of the Chesterfield officers, we stopped a group of eight or nine teenagers and people in their early 20s who were possibly drunk and disorderly in the street, but were mostly being loud and in high spirits. If the police had filled in the required forms for all nine of them, which would have involved asking their names, addresses, and why they had stopped there, it would have cut an hour or more out of their patrol time. Police officers on the front line therefore tend to find ways around filling in reams and reams of paperwork, even though they are told that they have to do it. We need to make the paperwork system as streamlined as possible. We have heard about the good examples and the good pilots, but we need to move beyond pilots.

The same is true of personal digital assistants. We have been debating and arguing about this issue for months now and the Government are moving down that road much faster. Let me give an example I have used before. Four years ago, Chesterfield borough council’s housing department equipped each of its housing repair teams, which deal with its 10,000 council houses, with a van that is logged by computer and global positioning system by the people at head office. Those people know what stock is on board each van, so if they get a call for a plumbing repair, they send not the van that the GPS satellite tells them is nearest, but the one that the computerised log tells them has the correct part on board. The repair man can get the job signed off by the customer on his hand-held PDA, that information is sent back to central office, then he can get his next job from his PDA. That system saves a lot of time, because he is not driving backwards and forwards between the centre of town and the outlying areas. Those repair men are gaining a great deal of time in the day to do their jobs more effectively, cheaply and responsibly. If my borough council’s housing department could do that four or five years ago, why is a similar system only just being rolled out across police forces after the pilots? Why does that common-sense usage take so long?

As the report points out, the technology is cheap. It can save at least an hour per officer per shift, and it can cost as little as 80p a day. In one authority, the use of hand-held BlackBerrys delivered £8.8 million of non-cashable savings a year. It provides secure access for the beat officer straight to the police national computer and other intelligence databases, so it is win-win all round.

As someone who is still using a mobile phone, I sometimes watch as technology develops. The point is not only that the police should be given that new technology, but that it should also be compatible with systems throughout England and Wales. One problem with the computer system is that one authority buys its own set of computers, which does not really speak to others set of computers, so it is about not only purchasing the technology but getting the procurement right so that we save money in the end.

Yes; that leads me to my penultimate point about collaboration. The Chair of the Committee has made the point that he does not want Leicestershire’s police force to be directed from Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire. Equally, I do not want Chesterfield to be policed from Leicester, Nottingham or anywhere else in the vast area known as the east midlands. A few years ago, we were facing the threat of enforced mergers of police forces into super-bodies. I see that idea as a major threat, although it would be an accountant’s dream. In the past few weeks, the CBI, I think, has said something like, “Let’s save lots of money by merging all the police forces together, because that is what an efficient business would do.” But what would happen to the customer in that situation?

The customer is the individual out on the street who wants a local policeman to respond to their local needs. If we had super-forces covering the east midlands and all the other regions in England, there would be a danger that the policing needs of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby would take priority over the rural policing needs of supposedly crime-free areas in rural parts of Derbyshire. However, rural Derbyshire is within one hour’s driving distance of 20 per cent. of the rest of the UK population. Indeed, it is a selling point of the Peak District national park in Derbyshire that so many people can get to that green lung. That access causes a problem with tourist numbers, which is a good problem to deal with, but it also means that all the serious organised gangs from Sheffield, Nottingham, Leeds and Rotherham can be there in no time.

The small local shop around the corner from where I live, on Newbold road in Chesterfield, was held up at gunpoint a few months ago when we had the heavy snow, and a number of other businesses around north Derbyshire have also been held up at gunpoint. Gun crime is pretty rare around Chesterfield, so it was pretty shocking when that happened to the shop that I use regularly with my kids. The gang who did it have been through court in the past few weeks. They were from Sheffield, and they drove into north Derbyshire, because they thought they would be less well known there and that the police would not be as big, organised and on the ball as the big city force in Sheffield. They were arrested fairly quickly, and they have been sent to prison, which is good. The Surrey MPs talked about something similar in the recent Westminster Hall debate on the capping of Surrey police funding. They said that organised crime gangs come out on the motorway to the London outskirts, to what they see as easier pickings.

We do not want collaboration and super-forces to be imposed. We have backed away from that idea now, but I am sure it will rear its head again. We do not want city policing issues to dominate, so that policing is stripped away from smallish, rural areas such as Chesterfield to some super-force elsewhere. I am absolutely against enforced collaboration—I think that the Committee Chairman has made the same point—but there are areas in which collaboration makes absolute sense. Indeed, the east midlands forces have undertaken some pioneer case studies in England showing where police forces can collaborate on serious and organised crime, terrorism and high-level policing threats without having to force a merger of police forces.

There is a role for a national strategy in one area that the Chairman has raised—the purchase of certain technology and equipment. Police officers have pointed out to me that some things are much more standardised in America, where police cruisers all tend to be the same type of large vehicle with plenty of room. The problem with many British police cars is that there is no room on the dashboard for bits of computer kit, because of the type of cars that the police buy. Moreover, they do not get the benefits of bulk purchase and standardisation across forces that have been mentioned. There is a place for intelligent collaboration and co-operation, and for national purchasing strategies on some things, but certainly not for removing local command, control and accountability, which we should strengthen.

The title of the report is “Policing in the 21st century”. As we came to the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, we faced many new challenges in policing, which is very different from what it was. The Government rightly boast that we now have more police officers per head of population than at any time in history. That is true, but we also have more need, as there are now crimes that did not exist 20 years ago. The scale of internet fraud is one example. Another issue that the Committee looked at that has not been discussed today is the fact that fraud attracts such a low rating for the police. Even though about £14 billion a year is taken in criminal fraud, it still is not a No. 1 priority for policing.

Police forces have to have dedicated teams to deal with internet fraud, internet paedophilia and, as was the case before the internet came along, child abuse. Even in the 1960s, people would not admit that child abuse existed, and did not believe that families were the main perpetrators. It simply was not talked about. Likewise, there are now police teams dedicated to dealing with domestic violence against women, and they can be extremely effective, but it was not very many years ago that that was not seen as a problem. If a husband hit his wife, it was simply seen as something that happened. The concept of policing has shifted much for the better in relation to such issues, partly because of shifting social attitudes on rape, domestic abuse or child abuse and admitting that those problems exist and that we need to do something about them, and partly because of a new wave of crimes that have come into existence, particularly in relation to the internet.

The advent of widespread car ownership has made it much easier to spread crime from one place to another. Criminals have made maximum use of the anonymity of being able to drive to a community in 20 minutes, where no one knows them at all. Again, there has been intelligent use of police technology to deal with such problems, such as car number plate recognition. Derbyshire police have told me that where automatic camera recognition has been piloted, they get so many hits that they cannot deal with them all. I have read a report of an experiment in London where cars were checked as they came across bridges over the Thames.

As we enter the 21st century, new demands are being put on police forces—for example, international terrorism is yet another problem with which they have to deal. We cannot just carry on in the same way and it is good that there are many signs of how police forces and politicians are moving in their thinking, but we have to move much faster. It is important to get that local accountability and democratic control back so that local communities can have a real say—not just in what they want, but in how it is going to be paid for. If local communities want something, they need to put their money where their mouth is. However, at the moment, central Government do not allow that to happen.

Her Majesty’s Opposition and I welcome this debate on the Home Affairs Committee’s report “Policing in the 21st Century”. The police in this country do a truly magnificent job, often in difficult and dangerous circumstances. That is brought home to those of us who work with the police service, and it was doubly brought home to me when I recently spent most of the week at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth, where I saw dedicated men and women working very hard. In the mother of Parliaments, it is incumbent on us all to acknowledge that at the outset—such comments always bear repeating.

I welcome the Minister to his new post. I also had fruitful discussions with his predecessors. I am grateful to him for setting out the Government’s views on the Committee’s report. I particularly want to congratulate the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Committee, on yet another thorough, illuminating, detailed and helpful report on the challenges facing police in the 21st century. He has a great reputation for producing, with the rest of his Committee, high quality reports—this is another in a long line.

I shall not scratch the surface of the subject too much—I endorse much of what the right hon. Gentleman has already said about his report—but I will pick out some of the issues that are particularly important to Her Majesty’s Opposition. The points in the report about police bureaucracy, redaction and countering risk aversion in the police service are very well made—in short, progress is not rapid enough and there is not enough of it.

The report uses the word “disappointment” in relation to the lack of progress made in reducing police bureaucracy. Since 1997, we have had at least four major reviews on reducing police bureaucracy and related subjects, but the fact remains that less than one fifth of patrol officers’ time is spent on patrol. That is not acceptable to the British public and I do not think that it is acceptable to hon. Members—no matter which political party they belong to.

The sort of things mentioned by the Flanagan review and in the glancing blows of Jan Berry’s more recent report show that lots of good ideas are flagged up, but that they are not followed through by Ministers. Let us take one example—forgive me if this seems to be a bit anoraky. The disclosure rules in the Manual of Guidance 6 form—the very long forms that police officers have to fill in as disclosure officers—are a huge bugbear. The Police Federation and the Police Superintendents Association, in short, ask whether such work could be better done by Crown Prosecution Service lawyers, who have to review these long forms anyway. Why does an officer have to do it? Why does the legislation make disclosure a requirement on a police officer when it would be better and more quickly done with more of a legal eye by non-police officers?

Flanagan talks about that in his final report on disclosure, which, of course, has a read-across to wider parts of the criminal justice system. However, we have not heard anything about that matter. We have already said on the record that we would favour shifting the burden to CPS lawyers—although we would have to pilot that—as a practical, simple and explicit way of reducing some of the more burdensome forms, specifically the part of the MG6 suite of forms that refers to disclosure of evidence.

A further issue that crops up is the need to reform statutory charging, for which Her Majesty’s Opposition have been arguing for more than two years—well before Flanagan. The statutory charging regime was introduced in 2004 and, in simple terms, it required a bigger role for the CPS to make charging decisions and, in relation to large swathes of offences, it removed the discretion that a custody sergeant had to make a charge. The proposal that we made, Flanagan made and, I believe, Jan Berry is also looking at, is to try to return more charging discretion to custody sergeants.

Certainly, charging sergeants should be able to make a decision in relation to all summary offences and they should not have to make any reference to the CPS unless they particularly want to. A large number of triable-either-way offences need to be explicitly set down as being a matter on which custody sergeants can make the charging decision, without having an obligation to go to the CPS to authorise a charge. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that indictable-only offences should be a matter just for custody sergeants, but there certainly needs to be radical reform. We need to go back more to the pre-2004 position, which was before statutory charging came in, and give custody sergeants more discretion. That would mean less file and pre-charge file building and would save time. I would be grateful to hear what the Minister has to say about that, particularly considering his experience in a former life at the Ministry of Justice.

Another totemic form is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 form—the authorisation for direct and other related forms of surveillance. No one pretends that the RIPA forms are used as frequently as some of the MG suite of forms. On average, police officers obtain between 20,000 and 25,000 authorisations a year under RIPA. However, the RIPA forms are a totemic example of unnecessary bureaucracy. Under a strict interpretation of RIPA, if a police officer wants to conduct a walk-by of the house of someone who is going to be arrested later in the day, they have to fill in a form. The Police Superintendents Association has given evidence in relation to the matter and has spoken to one of the Minister’s predecessors about it. We think that we should amend the RIPA codes—the statutory codes—to make it clear that, in certain situations, RIPA authorisation will not be necessary. Again, I would be grateful to hear from the Minister what progress has been made on that, in particular the Police Superintendents Association’s representation about two years ago to the right hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), who was then a Minister of State at the Home Office, on the specific point about reforming the RIPA codes.

I shall not detain the House with detail about stop-and account and stop and search, save to say that Her Majesty’s Opposition as long ago as 2005 believed that the stop-and-account form should be abolished in totality—but not the stop-and-search. That now seems to be a mainstream view. It would save hundreds of thousands of police hours each year. Also, we suggested finding a way to record the key information that will always be necessary for an intrusive procedure such as stop-and-search in a more user-friendly way. Digitised recordings are an obvious way of doing that, and we welcome the signs that progress is being made along those lines.

To reduce police bureaucracy, we really must get to grips with the Staffordshire pilot. There were also pilots in the west midlands, Leicestershire and Surrey, which were spoken about eloquently earlier. To crystallise the point, we all know of examples from many police forces of two 16-year-olds having a scuffle in a playground. The police are called and an offence of common assault might be disclosed by the facts—two young people shoving each other in the playground. Typically, in the past few years, that would have given rise to a requirement on the officer to start filling in forms and to record a crime. The four pilots suggested that a police officer could use his or her discretion and look for a solution that did not involve recording a crime. In the example that I gave, an apology could be offered, or the parents could be called in. Such solutions do not require treating the incident as a crime, with the full panoply of forms that are required.

What has not been said in this debate but which I think is important is that using discretion, as in the Staffordshire and other pilots, has its risks. Some of the officers who were involved in the pilots said that if they did not write down the details of the action that they took when called to an alleged incident and something went wrong subsequently, they would not have any back-up or paperwork if all they did was give a verbal dispensation or come to an agreement not to take the matter further. That is a real issue that police representative bodies have discussed with me.

Of course the main thrust should be to allow more discretion and less paperwork, but let us also understand that officers will need to be trained in the use of discretion. It is not just a question of saying to them, “Go out and use your discretion,” because it is not quite as simple as that. Some officers feel that filling in the forms gives them the necessary protection if something goes wrong a week or a month later. We should not play party politics or pretend that there is a simple answer. We must be sensitive to what the police representative bodies are saying on the matter.

Yes, Her Majesty’s Opposition unambiguously want a national roll-out of the Staffordshire model—we do not want pilots—and I would like to hear from the Minister what he, his colleagues and his predecessors have been doing to ensure that the model is more widely adopted, but also, having regard to my point, understanding that officers, many of whom might be quite young, need to be inculcated in the use of discretion when for so long they have always had the crutch of paperwork, if I can put it that way, to protect them in the event of someone challenging their exercise of discretion. Not enough has been said about that, which is why I particularly wanted to flag it up. The model is great, but extra work needs to be done to ensure that police officers’ careers are protected and that they are not accused of using discretion wrongly or in a way that gives rise to problems later on.

I close my remarks on reducing police bureaucracy, in which we all have an interest, by saying that it is not clear that we have cracked the nut of national targets, which are routinely complained about by all parties. The dreaded police performance assessment framework league tables have been superseded by the new analysis of policing and community safety framework. It is not immediately clear to me that the APACS framework is cutting the targetry and target-chasing that constabularies have to engage in. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police, Peter Fahy, without specifically referring to APACS, said that the national targetry burden on his and other forces is still there.

I would like to hear from the Minister what progress has been made on APACS. My understanding is that the PPAF and APACS frameworks will run in tandem this year as a dual system, and then APACS will kick in. How much time will the new system save the average force, compared with the PPAF system, given all the data collection that is implicit in both systems? Why is APACS better? Is it better? Can he tell us how it is better in terms of less targetry?

Having given a flavour of the need for some answers on police bureaucracy, which was admirably dealt with by the Home Affairs Committee, my next point is about the policing costs of dealing with immigration, which is touched on in the report. I shall not detain the House too long, except to say that a report by KPMG in September 2007 on the Cambridge constabulary concluded that Cambridgeshire required an additional 100 police officers to cover the additional work load generated by policing foreign nationals. That is from the report “The changing demography of Cambridgeshire”. There are strains on police resources for all kinds of reasons, but the issues raised by the chief constable of Cambridgeshire were correctly identified. The Minister should tell us what the position is on that, and also on translation services, interpreter services and so on.

Of course, pressure on police resources is caused not just by policing immigration. There is a tight budgetary settlement in this country for reasons that we do not really need to dilate on today. There will be pressures, whoever the Government are, on funding our great public services. Let us not forget that the police service is one of our great institutions. None of the chief constables to whom I speak or who gave evidence to the Select Committee could hide the fact that the police feel that their ability to do the job of keeping us safe, preventing crime and enforcing our laws is made more difficult in a tight budgetary environment.

Without arguing about how much will be put in budgets or freezes or any of that, I would like to flag up how, in a consensual way, we can get more bang for the existing buck. How can we make existing resources work better? Collaboration, which was touched on in the report, is so important. On page 4 the report states:

“Regional collaboration works well in some parts of England and Wales, but progress elsewhere is too slow.”

That is correct. Collaboration is the big game in town and will be for a long time, in the light of the fact that the strategic merger proposition of this Government failed and will not be revisited by Her Majesty’s Opposition. It will not, as far as I am aware, be revisited by Her Majesty’s Government, which is why there was some general agreement between the Opposition and the Minister’s predecessor about how we close the level 2 gap. That cannot be done by strategic merger, so collaboration is the way to do it.

In this context, it is important to mention clause 5 of the Policing and Crime Bill, which is going through Parliament this year and is important because it clearly gives new, unambiguous powers to Ministers, of whatever political persuasion, to mandate collaboration agreements. Without spelling out what has to be mandated in a collaboration agreement, there are some detailed provisions involved, which I took the Minister’s predecessor through in Committee.

We have already seen good, obvious examples where collaboration really should be taking place throughout the country and not in an ad hoc way. The Kent and Essex model, which is delivering huge recurrent savings, allowing new fully warranted officers to be hired and put on the front line, has been built around those counties sharing back-office services, including payroll, training and so on. The Policing and Crime Bill, which this Government are putting through Parliament and which we support, is important because it will give Ministers, potentially, the power to mandate these excellent efficiency-saving agreements. There has to be a huge debate about how that power in the Bill might be used in future. That is clearly the right way to go, but I should be interested to hear what the Minister and his Home Office colleagues are doing about mandating collaboration.

The Chairman of the Committee dealt thoroughly and in great detail with alcohol-related crime. The most recent British crime survey, published in July last year, showed that 45 per cent. of all victims of violence described their assailant as being under the influence of alcohol at the time. We have also heard in this debate—I agree with the sentiments expressed—about the preponderance of cheap alcohol and we know about the problems that this causes. More generally, the extended licensing hours that the Government brought in under the Licensing Act 2003 have probably compounded the problem of alcohol-related crime. It would be interesting to hear whether the Minister believes, finally, that there is a legal basis for banning the use of loss-leading alcohol sales by supermarkets. That specific point was raised in the Committee’s report and it would be useful to get a clear steer from the Minister on that. Her Majesty’s Opposition believe that there must be an urgent review the appropriateness of the law on extended licensing and 24-hour drinking in towns and cities.

The report also touches on the crucial importance of engaging the British public more widely in what the priorities are for their police and how policing is delivered. That goes to the heart of the points on local accountability that were raised earlier in this debate. The report says bluntly in its introduction:

“Public expectations of the police are not being met.”

The most recent British crime survey found that, across the country, only 48 per cent. of people had confidence in the police and local authorities to deal with crime and antisocial behaviour. There are figures showing higher public confidence in various police forces, although there is no magical number, but let us just agree that there is always room for improvement. Lots of constabularies have high levels of confidence and respect emanating from the local populace, but it could be better.

The proposals to reform local police authorities advanced by the Government last year were dropped. I will not rehearse the reasons for that. Her Majesty’s Opposition believe that there must be a much clearer line of direct accountability that the British public can exercise when judging and directing how policing is done. It really is a case of power to the people in this respect. We have a proposal for a lay commissioner, not a police officer, to be elected for each constabulary force area. With regard to the events of the past few weeks in this place, the public expect the governing classes—in the most general sense—to be more responsive, transparent and open. That expectation might also extend to large parts of public service, including the health service and the police service. This debate needs to be had. We Conservatives have our own model, the Liberal Democrats have a separate model and the Labour Government have asked the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) to do some work as well. In short, we all believe that the current police authority model, which is an indirectly-plus-nominated model of 17 men and women—with a slightly higher number in the London Metropolitan Police Authority—has to change, because it is not delivering the clear line of accountability that the public require. It is about not what we politicians and Members of Parliament think is needed, but what the public require. It is important that there is another report in the coming months showing what further evidence the Committee has taken on a more direct, accountable model for holding the police service locally to account.

This is an important debate and an important report. I have picked out some of the issues thrown up by this report that particularly exercise Her Majesty’s Opposition. I look forward to the Minister’s giving specific replies to some of the specific, although not exhaustive, questions that I have posed.

May I thank colleagues for the consensual and helpful way in which they have framed today’s debate? There are key issues that we need to address in government, with the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) and for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), as Opposition spokesmen.

You will understand, Mr. Williams, that I am in day three of my tenure as Minister with responsibility for security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing. I hope that my experience as Minister with responsibility for prisons, probation and youth justice will help me to understand some of the complexities of the issues before me. Having been involved in that work for the past two and a half years, and having dealt with security issues in a previous role in Northern Ireland, it is interesting to see things through the prism of the last three days in my new area of responsibility—I hope that I can do justice to it.

I am grateful for the tributes that have been paid to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), who has gone on to other activities in government as the Minister of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families. I am also grateful to those who mentioned my right hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), who has returned to the Back Benches, but will undoubtedly occasionally contribute to debates on these issues in due course.

I will try to answer the points that have been mentioned in broad terms by right hon. and hon. Members, but I begin by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East for the work on this matter that he has done on the Committee. He will know that we have been able to accept many of the recommendations, and my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, who was the author of the Government’s response, acknowledged not only that my right hon. Friend and his team did tremendous work, but that their suggestions were sensible. We have been able to accept some of them but, as always, not all. However, I will continue to keep them under review because I believe in examining problems day by day. As hon. Members have said, the challenges for policing change regularly.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield, like my right hon. Friend, mentioned things that are happening now that we would never have considered 10, 11, 12 or 15 years ago, such as internet grooming and contact, child sex trafficking, and even—dare I say it?—gun and knife crime. When I was first elected to the House 17 and a half years ago, such issues were not on the radar of Members of Parliament. I know from my experience as the Minister with responsibility for prisons and probation that even during that time fresh challenges came before me that we had to examine and deal with. This important report is a snapshot of where we are now, but it will never be a static document. We will work on the issues that we have accepted, and we will continue to be aware of those that we have rejected and today’s debate. The report addressed a range of issues that hon. Members have raised this afternoon, such as collaboration, police numbers, capacity performance indicators, reducing bureaucracy, improvements in technology, the need to increase productivity and efficiency, diversity, alcohol and police numbers, all of which I will try to touch on.

This morning, I had the privilege of addressing the Local Government Association for the first time as the Minister with responsibility for policing. I tried to set out some themes that are important for me to consider during whatever time I have in this post. I am pleased that they were echoed by some of the themes in the debate. Whatever is happening at the moment, local accountability is vital. The people who know best about policing in my constituency are not just the chief constable and those on the police authority, but the local basic unit commander and beat managers. Sometimes the local community needs a better way of engaging with the police on accountability.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced some weeks ago an examination of some of those issues in a White Paper to be produced in the autumn. I have a blank page for those issues. Sensible suggestions are being debated across the board in all communities, and we will consider them and return to the accountability issue during my tenure in this post.

This morning, I mentioned visibility, which is extremely important. It was also mentioned by hon. Members this afternoon. That includes how to make policing visible, how to make people feel engaged, and how to show people locally what local police forces achieve. Partnership is also extremely important. In his report, Ronnie Flanagan, to whom I pay tribute, indicated strongly that crime reduction cannot be achieved only by the police. The actions of the local council, the local fire brigade, neighbourhood wardens, community groups and local representatives are as important as what the police do.

This morning, I also mentioned delivery. We want positive outcomes, but not just for crime reduction. To deliver, we must take on board the very points that have been mentioned across the board today about bureaucracy. We also need to ensure that we have an efficient front line and that the whole system is about what happens on the front line, with support from chief constables and Ministers down. We agree on some of the synergies, and although we might have different views on some issues, which will be open for debate, the common themes in the report are accountability, visibility, partnership, delivery and reducing bureaucracy, as they were in the contributions that I was happy to hear from the two Opposition Front-Benchers.

An important issue that has permeated our debate is public confidence in policing, and how we tackle that and ensure that justice is delivered. Right hon. and hon. Members will know better than me—they have been debating the matter longer than I have been in my new role—that the new relationship between the police and the public on the policing pledge provides an opportunity to hold the police to account for what they need to do. We must consider how to respond to local expectations. For the first time, the public can have a real and clear expectation of the standards of service from the local police. Communities, especially through neighbourhood policing teams, should be able to see how we are working positively on that. My constituency, which covers the same police authority as yours in north Wales, Mr. Williams, has crime mapping, which is helpful. We consider what we are doing in a local area to tackle crime on the ground. The hon. Member for Chesterfield said that that is an important contribution, and it is important generally.

A central question was how we consider targets. The Government have moved their position, perhaps because of contributions on targets. We have scrapped top-down targets, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East and the hon. Members for Chesterfield and for Bury St. Edmunds said. That is a key to improving public confidence. The new single confidence target will measure the success of the policing pledge, and ensure that partnership working happens locally.

Jan Berry’s work on behalf of the Government to examine bureaucracy is ongoing and important. It will be a key factor for me when ensuring that we streamline still further, as was Ronnie Flanagan’s work. Public confidence in the police will depend on how well communities believe that the police work for them. Helpful comments and suggestions were made today about the report.

It is important to recognise—I am grateful for the comments of all three Members who have spoken—that the police do a very good job. I spent Tuesday morning in Croydon with not just the borough commander and the local beat officers on an estate in Addington, but police community support officers. They were not only engaged in visible policing—walking and taking initiatives on the ground—but were in discussion with a local head teacher, and working with local neighbourhood wardens and with teenage groups at the effective local youth club groups. In the evening, they were organising Crystal Palace football club’s local activities. Such alternative activities are important and should be recognised. Such a positive role is mirrored throughout England and Wales, often in difficult circumstances. The work of the police, community support officers and other people who give their time as councillors and officials is extremely valuable.

We should never forget that all that work—the hon. Member for Chesterfield touched on this—has real value on the ground. A key issue that was mentioned is perception. We cannot get away from the fact that crime is down by 39 per cent., robbery has fallen by 18 per cent., burglary is down, and car crime is down, but perception goes to the heart of all the issues that I mentioned: visibility, accountability, delivery and ownership of the problems and challenges in local areas. We should be proud of some of our successes, such as the 55 per cent. reduction in burglary over the past 12 years, but I am acutely aware—this was particularly the case when my car was stolen at Flint railway station—that when crime happens to an individual, that is 100 per cent. for the victim and their family, not in the context of a 55 per cent. reduction. We must examine how to build public consensus and understanding, and how to deal with such issues positively.

A number of initiatives are driving things forward, such the youth crime action plan in 70 authorities, which has received lots of money. Only on Tuesday, London authorities received £4.5 million to tackle youth and knife crime. We are trying to focus on key areas. We must build on a lot of the good work that is being done, and not only by the Home Office, for which I now have responsibility, by bringing in other Departments—I am trying to do that across Government, as the report suggests—including the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and the Department of Health to tackle the issues holistically.

Hon. and right hon. Members, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, have said that addressing antisocial behaviour is key in this area. Once again, the role of local councils, using a range of tools and powers, is especially important in that regard. Those tools and powers do not just include the well-tried antisocial behaviour orders, acceptable behaviour contracts and fixed penalty notices. Local councils also have a role as partners in this process, which the Select Committee report reflected on and encouraged, and we need to do more to promote that.

The three Members who spoke today all expressed particular concern about the issue of alcohol. They also spoke about the need for us to look imaginatively at how we can tackle some of the alcohol-driven crime that causes antisocial behaviour on the ground and leads, in many instances, to some of the hidden crimes of violence in the home that are extremely serious and extremely worrying.

For example, it was asked why we had not taken forward the plan for a minimum price for alcohol—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East mentioned that in particular. He will know that the Government announced in December 2008 that we had decided not to proceed with that. However, that does not mean that alcohol, including alcohol sales and alcohol-related crimes, is not important. Hon. Members will know that we have recently published a further document for discussion on alcohol sales in general—I have a copy here. It was launched only two weeks ago and covers a range of consultations on how we can examine some of the key issues involved in alcohol-related behaviour and crime. We have looked at important issues, which have been mentioned, relating to happy hour drinking, women-only drinking nights, alcohol sales in general, and off and on-trade premises. We are also looking at how we can promote responsible sales of alcohol, rather than the irresponsible sales that cause us great difficulty. I hope that there will be a solid debate about those issues and I am certain that we will discuss them in due course—whether in this Chamber or elsewhere—as we have done in the past.

It is important that we recognise that we should not penalise the many people who drink responsibly. However, I am acutely aware of the fact that for young people, in some cases, and for many older people alcohol can be a driver of crime and poor behaviour. We are considering proposing discretionary conditions, including further restrictions on drinks promotions, which I have already mentioned. We are also looking at simple issues, such as safer alternatives to glassware and allowing local transport information to be displayed in licensed premises, which would help individuals to avoid one of the big problems that I came across as a Justice Minister: the consequences of death and injury caused by drink-driving. Although there are challenges, we can meet them, and I will welcome debate about them.

The question of bureaucracy in policing has been mentioned—indeed, it has been a common theme in the debate. Through the work of Jan Berry and Ronnie Flanagan, we have opportunities to address that issue. I am extremely aware that we must continue to look at how we can free up the police from the bureaucracy that they face as part of the work that they undertake. It is important that police officers have the skills, opportunities for development and support to concentrate on their primary duties, which are detecting and driving down crime, increasing public confidence and helping to support the community. We must also ensure that they not only use their own skills and abilities but, as has been mentioned, make greater use of quality IT, where appropriate, and support mechanisms so that we reduce red tape and give them the discretion locally to undertake their activities positively.

Hon. Members will know that the Government have scrapped activity-based costings. We have also stopped, or significantly reduced, 36 data collection requirements and supported all forces to streamline crime recording processes. Furthermore, as has already been mentioned, we scrapped the lengthy stop-and-account form on 1 January 2009, which I think has been genuinely welcomed. It might well have been suggested by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds before that date but, then again, good ideas never have an ownership that cannot be taken by somebody else.

The Minister has been rattling through his initiatives so quickly that he might have already dealt with this point. However, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) raised a point that was also raised in our report about Staffordshire and the need to have good practice implemented immediately, so that when a police force is doing a good job, we can share that practice rather than waiting to do so.

Once again I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I am trying to give an overview of some of the activities that have been undertaken to date. He will know—again, this point was mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds—that the pilots that were conducted last year in Surrey, Leicestershire, Staffordshire and the west midlands have been shown to have benefits. We certainly need to look at those pilots very positively. Our challenge is to build on that work by working with Jan Berry and, without making any other commitments, I undertake to look at the issues arising from this debate in the next couple of days. As I have said, three days into the job, I need to make some assessment so that the points I have made have greater validity.

I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time. He started off with Minister-speak, clearly because he has been in his new role for two days, and ended up by saying that he will look at this issue of good practice in the next couple of days. It sounded like the fastest timetable in history. Obviously we do not want the Minister to make a decision today, in the middle of this debate. All that I ask is that he revisit this issue quickly, because good practice needs to be put into effect immediately. If he could revisit that issue and perhaps write to me in the near future, I would be most grateful.

I will give my right hon. Friend a positive and solid undertaking that I will look at all the suggestions that have been made in this debate. I will also read the debate when it is published in Hansard. I will look at the points that have been made and try to reflect on them. As the Minister—the person where the buck stops—I have to make judgments on these issues, with colleagues, including officials. Three days into this job, I have a range of issues to look at and a range of assessments to make. However, I know that I also have a maximum of 11 months in this post until there is a general election. In that time, I can look at these key issues and I will have an opportunity to affect some of them; I have already tried to flag some up to those right hon. and hon. Members who are here today. Those issues are related to accountability, visibility, bureaucracy and how we deliver in due course.

I want to try to cover some of the other points that have been mentioned. The hon. Member for Chesterfield talked in great detail about the issue of funding. Again, that is an issue that I must look at in the next few weeks and months, to address some of the key challenges that we face. We have a commitment to police finances for 2010 and 2011. The Minister of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, when he was in my post, previously gave commitments that the financial settlement for the police will not be reopened. This year alone, about £9.5 billion is being spent in England and Wales on addressing the issues that we have discussed. I do not know what the public finances will be in the future and I do not know what will ultimately happen in relation to decisions that are taken downstream. However, there is certainly a commitment to maintain the current position on police funding for the future.

As part of our discussions, some difficult decisions have been taken about capping, in relation to police funding in Surrey and in Derbyshire. We have made it very clear, in relation to the Department for Communities and Local Government and previously in relation to the Home Office, in every year since 2004-05 that capping action would be taken if the Government judged that there was a need for that action. Again, that is a debate that we have had today.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield made legitimate points about funding issues. We have to examine those issues across Government and consider how they are being dealt with. However, we have taken decisions in that reflect the fact that there is a need, in certain circumstances, to cap to protect taxpayers from excessive increases in spending to deal with these issues. Ultimately, this is all related to the discussions that we must have about the accountability and other issues that may arise in relation to the forthcoming White Paper. These are real issues, which I know the hon. Gentleman will continue to press me on in general terms.

The hon. Gentleman will know that we hope to undertake a consultation in the very near future the funding formula for next year. We will look at that funding formula as part of the wider comprehensive spending review for the next three years. That important issue will remain on the table and up for discussion, and there will be a range of views expressed about it in due course.

I think that the hon. Gentleman suggested that there may well be some central direction to the funding that goes to police authorities. In fact, there is no central direction of any note on those issues. All the money is unhypothecated. Police authorities and chief constables can spend it in whichever way they wish. That is part of the localism that I shall continue to encourage. It involves people looking at what is happening at local level and how that can be undertaken in a way that meets the needs.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds raised a couple of other key issues that I want to touch on. The first relates to police charging. I acknowledge that charging processes need to be reformed. My predecessor committed to that in the past. That is why we introduced statutory charging in the first place, and that has generally been a success. We will work with Jan Berry to consider those issues still further.

With regard to the RIPA code of practice, a public consultation is under way, as the hon. Gentleman will know. I need to examine the detailed results of that consultation. I will have to make decisions and would welcome a contribution outside this Chamber from the hon. Members present, who are key players in what I hope will ultimately be the gaining of consensus on how we deal with the issue. From my perspective, we need to have consensus if we can.

I have a couple of further points, which are a bit random but which relate to valuable points made by hon. Members during the debate. My right hon. Friend talked about whether Airwave would prove to be a success. There will be Airwave requirements in line with Olympic security plans. We are considering the final requirement, and that is nearly complete. I will certainly keep him informed of progress on that and I look forward to working with him in relation to it.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned the forthcoming inquiry, which I welcome and will have to participate in, on the role of SOCA and the general objectives with regard to its future effectiveness. SOCA has brought together key players in relation to direct practices and working practices to tackle serious organised crime. Self-evidently, we need to keep it under review. There will shortly be changes in part of the leadership of SOCA with the retirement of Sir Stephen Lander. I will certainly welcome the contribution of the Select Committee in putting issues to us, but with regard to day-to-day of serious organised crime of a pan-European nature, I have already, in my first few days in this post, seen very interesting operations involving SOCA.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield talked about whether we should give the collection of crime statistics to an independent body. When I was in the Ministry of Justice, there was a Chinese wall between Ministers and the Department in relation to many of the statistics that I saw and that were published by the Government—this applies not just to the MOJ, but to the Home Office—even though the Department often produced some of the statistics. There are already strict rules on statistics. Home Office statistics in particular are designated national statistics and therefore, like MOJ statistics, are subject to strict standards that prevent political comment on them before their publication. Often I have had statistics as a Minister that are about the performance of the Department for which I am responsible and that I have seen only 24 hours in advance of their publication. There is independence already and the Government have strengthened that with the establishment of the Statistics Authority—an independent body at arm’s length from Government.

The migration impact fund that was mentioned does exist in full. All police authorities can apply to it for funds. We have spent £70 million over two years in the UK. Many local services are submitting proposals for funding, and the Government are considering them.

I think that I have covered the vast majority of the points that I wished to cover. My final point relates to what my right hon. Friend said about the investigation of the allegations that have been made about Metropolitan police officers in Enfield. He will know that as a Minister I am not able to comment on that at the moment. The matter has gone to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for investigation. I know that the IPCC will examine it in detail. I will obviously reflect in due course on the outcome of the investigation, but self-evidently there are serious allegations that need to be investigated and the IPCC is best placed to do that investigation.

I will read the record of the debate in detail and reflect on all the points that have been made. If I have not answered points raised today, I will consider them and send letters to hon. Members who are here today. I give a commitment, as the new Minister, with regard to the great challenge that we face. We have an opportunity in the next weeks and months to consider how we can improve accountability, visibility and delivery and ensure that we make efforts collectively that reduce crime and increase public confidence.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the report. I look forward to appearing before him again, as I did on, I think, three occasions as an MOJ Minister, and I look forward to friendly battles but also co-operation with the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds and for Chesterfield and their respective shadow Secretaries of State. I thank you for your chairmanship today, Mr. Williams.

With the leave of the House, I shall respond. I do not intend to detain the House. I just want to thank all right hon. and hon. Members and shadow spokespersons for taking part in the debate. I am getting a bit worried about home affairs. We had a very consensual debate on knife crime earlier this week, and here we have that again. Of course, it will not be the norm, but we have raised a number of points. I paid tribute to members of my Committee when I spoke on the last occasion, and I should like now to pay tribute to the Select Committee staff, who worked extremely hard in the preparation of the report. All the credit goes to hon. Members, because we sign these reports, but the staff work very hard. As the Clerk to the Committee has come into the Chamber and is at the Table, and as she keeps us all in order in the Committee, I think that that is where I should leave my contribution. We will return to this issue, because policing is a crucial aspect of Government policy. I look forward to debating these subjects with hon. Members in the future.

Question put and agreed to.