HC Deb 08 February 1949 vol 461 cc328-40

9.52 p.m.

Mr. Willis (Edinburgh, North)

In the short time at our disposal I wish to raise a matter which has recently caused some concern to Scottish Members, namely, the recent appointment of the Commandant to the Central Police Training College. There have been a number of Questions down on the Order Paper for the past three weeks about this matter, which indicates the general interest taken in it, and tonight I wish to ask some further questions about it and to raise certain matters in connection with the appointment.

When my right hon. Friend was answering Questions on this matter he pointed out that the qualifications for this position did not necessarily include any knowledge of police work at all. He suggested that what was required was a man who had had experience in organising colleges of this type. As I understand the position, there were in Scotland, prior to the establishment of this Central Police Training College, three police training centres, each of which was in charge of a police officer. I should have thought that one of those officers, who had an experience of organising a college in which instruction was to be given to policemen, would have been suitable for this job. It seems to me that the decision not to appoint one of them indicates that the committee advising the Secretary of State did not think that these people were the proper people for the jobs that they had originally held In addition, out of the total number of applications for this job, 18 were made by police officers. There were seven from Scottish police officers and 11 from police officers with experience in England. Surely an officer could have been found from amongst those 18 applicants to fill this position. It does seem to cause some reflection upon the police forces that a suitable choice could not be made from them.

Arising out of that second point, what will be the effect of this upon the police force? My hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary was, asked this question on 1st February: Could the Joint Under-Secretary say what effect he thinks this will have on police recruitment, which at present is disappointingly slow? Rather flippantly, I thought, he jumped up to the Box and said: None at all, I should think."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st February, 1949; Vol. 460, c, 1505.] Of course, he had not thought very much about it. The fact that this appointment has not been given to a member of the police force has caused serious discontent in the police forces. While the actual appointment may not have affected recruitment, discontentment in the police force will affect recruitment. One cannot expect men to join if the members of the force are complaining about this and about the lack of opportunities for promotion. That appears to be an important consideration. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) suggested in his Question, we are finding difficulty in building up our police force. I understand that we cannot get all the recruits that we need. I should have thought that in those circumstances every step would have been taken to see that the police force was at least content and satisfied with what happened inside it.

The third point I wish to mention is that quite a number of people have expressed the view rather forcibly that military service should not be a qualification for any appointment connected with the police force. The type of training involved is different. The police have to settle civilian problems and it has been felt in the past that the person who has been trained in the Armed Forces is not exactly suitable for this type of work. Nobody would belittle the service of a man who has been in the Royal Air Force. That was necessary, and probably in the Air Force the man has done a job for which we are grateful, but we must consider whether that type of training is the kind that we want associated with our police force. I ask the Joint Under-Secretary whether this matter was fully considered. Those are some of the points about which we should like rather more information than we have had during Question Time, and I trust that my hon. Friend will do his best to answer.

9.58 p.m.

Mr. Carmichael (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

In the almost complete absence from the House of the official Opposition, I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will not mind some criticism from his own benches. We have good reason for raising this issue. Some time ago the view was expressed by the Opposition that jobs were being created for the boys. A matter which has disturbed me in recent years in this House has been the appointment of military people to a good number of posts in civil administration. That is one of the reasons why I raise objection to this appointment.

Let it be clearly understood that there is no personal objection. I do not know the gentleman concerned and I accept entirely from the Secretary of State for Scotland that he is a man of very great qualifications in regard at least to his service in the Air Force. But there were some 72 applications. I think one of the strong points made by the Secretary of State was that only seven men with police service in Scotland made application and that the highest rank was that of inspector. One only requires to examine the case and one can find a reason why prominent and competent police officials in Scotland did not make application.

It being Ten o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Hannan.]

Mr. Carmichael

Air Vice-Marshal Graham was appointed Commandant-Designate at a salary of £1,000, rising to £1,200 a year. With an exalted designation of that kind, he was entitled to a very much higher salary than that. Commandant-Designate is an amazing title for an entirely new office in Scotland. I say that there are a good number of police officers in Scotland holding much higher salaries than that, and, obviously, competent people with long experience of the police service were not prepared to make application for a post of this kind. If we want an efficient police service I do not think that salary is high enough. That is my genuine opinion, and if we want a person to be in command of a college which is to give some directions to the police forces of Scotland, this salary is not comparable with the salaries paid to chief constables in many of the burghs.

Sir William Darling (Edinburgh, South)

What about the headmasters, who hold comparable offices?

Mr. Carmichael

I do not know that they are comparable offices, because they are looking after children and a constable is not looking after children so much as people like the hon. Member and myself. I say that that is one of the factors in this situation that must be examined. I happened to be associated with the Glasgow Corporation at the time when this college was first suggested, and prior to the institution of the college three schools were in operation in Scotland, all directed by people with long police experience.

There has been discontent in the police forces, and I want to know whether this is the opening of the door to the military type. In the police service since the war, we have taken many leaves out of Hitler's book, as we have done in connection with many of our services, and there has been some movement in a military direction in the last three or four years, more than at any time in peace for very many years.

Sir W. Darling

Under this Government.

Mr. Carmichael

In actual fact, I do not think the hon. Gentleman will have any other kind of Government. I am not disturbed about that. It is the case in the City of London that the chief of the Metropolitan Police has always been a person with long military training. I hope that is not going to be introduced into Scotland, because if so, I can see a future Secretary of State standing at that Box and telling us it is necessary to have military men in charge of our recruits because we have had military men in charge of the well-trained police. I think that will create more discontent in the police forces.

There is one other point. We all know that there has never been that happy understanding and fellowship which should exist between the civilian population and the police. There is no need to deny it, there always has been a strained relationship betwen the police forces and the civilian population.

Sir W. Darling

No.

Mr. Carmichael

I do not like it. I think it has been diminishing in recent years, and I think the police are now being recognised as responsible guides in community development. One has to look back to the number of policemen in our big cities of Scotland who have been called upon to exercise physical force in carrying out their duties, though a very limited amount of such force is now required because the police are coming closer to the community as responsible guides in civic development but I think an appointment of this kind tends to leave an impression with the ordinary citizen that we are introducing a military man in order to equip the police along military lines.

We are grateful both to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the Secretary of State for Scotland for making it possible for us to raise this issue. Before the Debate concludes, I want an assurance from the Joint Under-Secretary of State which will not only satisfy the police federation and the young, ambitious and competent men in the force nowadays, but will satisfy the civilian population that this person was selected because of some extraordinary capacity completely outwith his training in the military machine; and I want an assurance that in future, chief constables and responsible people in the counties and burghs of Scotland, guiding and directing the operation of the police force, will not be drawn from the military ranks. If the Joint Under-Secretary can ease our minds on that point, I shall be satisfied. Some day we may visit the college and probably appreciate that the man appointed is quite competent in his work, but in the meantime we are anxious to get some satisfaction from the Joint Under-Secretary.

10.7 p.m.

Mr. Hector Hughes (Aberdeen, North)

I am sure the House will have come to the conclusion that neither of the hon. Members who have spoken has made out a case against this appointment in principle, in theory or in fact. As I understand it, the method of making such an appointment is that the Secretary of State considers it judicially upon evidence which is laid before him. We do not know what was the evidence laid before him and no attempt has been made by either of the hon. Members to indicate that there was improper evidence.

Mr. Willis

This is not a question of making out a case against the appointment. It is a question of raising the matter in order that we may get certain questions answered and have greater knowledge, and in order that the police force in Scotland itself may be reassured about this matter, because they have considerable anxiety.

Mr. Carmichael

And so that the Government can make out a case for the appointment.

Mr. Hector Hughes

I should have thought that the hon. Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Willis) who presented this argument—it is not a case—would at least have given some reason why this appointment was not properly made or was not a proper one. The hon. Member for North Edinburgh said that complaints had been made against the appointment on grounds of principle or on some ground which was not specified. He did not produce a single complaint, nor did he specify what was the nature of those complaints.

What is the principle involved? It seems to me that the test of this appointment, as indeed of any other appointment, should be fitness for the job. That involves consideration of individual qualities, of training and of record. It seems to me wrong to argue that a military man is unfit for such an appointment just because he is a military man, regardless of whatever other qualifications he may have had. Military men have been found fit for such appointments in the past, and notwithstanding what was said by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael) I submit that the training of a military officer is comparable in many respects to training for high office in the police. The individual qualities which make for success in one, often have made for success in the other. In the past many distinguished military men have occupied positions such as this with distinction and success.

Turning to another aspect, is there anything in the record of this particular officer that makes him unfit for this appointment. None has been specified. The hon. Member for Bridgeton said there is no particular objection to this appointee on personal grounds or on grounds of training, and there both hon. Members seem to rest, I will not say their case, but the argument which they presented. They rested it on the mere fact that the appointee was a military man and thereby, ipso facto, unfit for such appointment. I contest that. I suggest that the proper principle to apply is the test of fitness for the job. The Secretary of State should weigh the evidence, and we do not know what the evidence before him was. Therefore, the questions which were put by the hon. Member for North Edinburgh should be answered in such a way as to indicate why this appointment was properly made.

10.10 p.m.

Sir William Darling (Edinburgh, South)

I should like to intervene in this discussion because for some three years I was a police officer. I believe I was a moderately successful police officer in that period. The idea that police officers are the only persons suitably qualified for such appointments by art and science is, I think, a rather narrow one. It hardly does justice to the hon. Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Willis) and to the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael). What the Secretary of State surely had in mind was the appointment of someone trained and qualified not for the duty of a chief constable, but for the organisation, not of a police service, but of a college to instruct, in the broadest possible way, men and women who are entering the police service.

Faced with that problem, faced with that duty, quite rightly, I think, the Secretary of State cast his net far and wide. As the hon. Member for Bridgeton has said, there has been a closer drawing together between the police forces and the general public. If a college is being set up for the instruction of police officers, then surely one with a closer association with the general public, and less with those bred and born in the police forces, is exactly the kind of person to whom should be entrusted the charge of such a college. I think the Secretary of State is justified in this appointment.

I have some connection with the police forces of Scotland, and I am not aware that there is a vast, widespread dissatisfaction current in the Police Federation. In fact, I take the exactly opposite view. The facts seems to support the view I take. Of the three qualified and experienced men in the police forces who had themselves had experience of setting up colleges at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, I am informed, none applied for this post. Why? Because they felt that their future, if they had a future at all, was not in the organisation of a college but in the proper line of promotion which leads to the office of chief constable.

Mr. Carmichael

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that the salary of £1,000 is exactly £1,000 less per annum than that paid to the Chief Constable of Glasgow, and is, I have no doubt, £750 less than that being paid to the Chief Constable of Edinburgh? Quite obviously, in such circumstances, no one would expect those gentlemen to make application for the post.

Sir W. Darling

Exactly. I do not think the hon. Gentleman sees how his words fail to express his ideas. Quite obviously, the Secretary of State was not appointing a chief constable. Had the Secretary of State appointed a chief constable, or a person of the same emoluments as are paid to a chief constable, to run the Police College of Scotland, he would at once have raised all sorts of problems and cross-purposes. Quite definitely he was appointing someone to a college and to the organisation of a college for training men and women. We do not pay to any university professor teaching the art and practice of commerce a salary equivalent to the income of a multiple storekeeper whose income ranges from £15,000 to £25,000 a year; and yet we do not argue that, because the professor is not paid such a large sum of money, he is not qualified to teach the subject.

Mr. Willis

It is because we have no idea of values.

Sir W. Darling

The hon. Member for North Edinburgh and the hon. Member for Bridgeton—I have noticed it on more than one occasion—suffer greatly from an agreeable, an amusing, an entertaining, but slightly disconcerting confusion of thought. There are two definite sorts of persons before us—chief constables who get from £1,500 to £2,500 a year, and organisers of training colleges. The Secretary of State does not suffer from that confusion of thought. He is not thinking of chief constables or of those who might be promoted to be chief constables, but of persons qualified by wide and general experience for the business of organising a training college. I think he has made an admirable and, I am sure, a successful appointment.

If the idea of the hon. Member for North Edinburgh and the hon. Member for Bridgeton is to be carried to its logical conclusion, policemen are only to be eligible for any position in connection with the police force. If that is so, I would remind the hon. Member for Bridgeton that we had in Glasgow a distinguished chief constable who came there, I think from one of the irregular forces in Southern Africa. The people of Glasgow made him chief constable, and he was a successful chief constable. Did he remain a chief constable or become even the organiser of a training college? No, this distinguished and able man has been retained in the public service, but retained in a larger, wider and more useful sphere far removed from the police service. I beg my hon. Friends not to take this narrow, stratifying view of public service. Let men of ability move freely from one section of public service to another, so that the maximum good of the public may be achieved

10.16 p.m.

Mr. Rankin (Glasgow, Tradeston)

I think that we are indebted to the hon. Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Willis) for raising this matter tonight. It will at least enable the Under Secretary to let us know exactly the functions of this individual and to state clearly the purposes of the college because, in spite of what the hon. Member for South Edinburgh (Sir W. Darling) has said, one would assume that the purpose of a police college is to train men to become efficient and knowledgable police officers. Therefore it is a great and important qualification that the principal of such a college should be an individual who has himself gone along the road which the men whom he is training propose to follow. I think that applies in almost any sphere that one cares to examine. I would say to the hon. and learned Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Hector Hughes) that whenever we start appointing joiners to a high legal position, he will be the first member to make a great noise about that appointment

Mr. Hector Hughes rose—

Mr. Rankin

I have only a minute to go, and I simply cannot give way, much as I should like to give way to my hon. and learned Friend. I submit that we are not dealing simply with the fitness of this individual; we are dealing with what may be a practice. Every young man who enters the British Army is told that he has a field marshal's baton in his knapsack—even if it remains there. Surely we are not now going to promise to everyone who enters the R.A.F. that he has a policeman's baton in his knapsack.

10.19 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Thomas Fraser)

Perhaps it will ease the mind of the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) if I say that every man who joins the police force has a chief constable's badge in his pocket, because in fact promotion in the police force is confined to the police force. It is one of the few services in the country which is a closed shop. That is the answer to the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael), who asked if this was evidence of military intrusion into the police service. It is not.

As has been made clear in answers to Questions during the last week or two, my right hon. Friend was not in fact asking for a policeman to take on police duties. He was not inviting applications for someone to serve in the police force. He invited applications from persons with qualifications enabling them to take over the responsibility of organising and generally running a college for policemen. The person ultimately appointed had experience of organising a college not so very different from this one; but not one of the applicants who had police service in Scotland had any such experience. The man appointed has been much in the news recently, and I hope he does not mind the publicity he has had. I regretted it a little, although this Debate, if it results in dispelling any misapprehension caused in Scotland in recent weeks, will have served a very useful purpose.

I should have thought that there was no reason why the police in Scotland should regard this appointment as any slight upon the police force. Indeed, it is not uncommon for policemen on retirement to take jobs in the public service, and in other spheres. As with the Air Force and the Services generally, one finds that the vast majority of members of the police force retire from that service at an age when they have still lots of energy left in them, and lots of capacity for rendering a very useful service to the community. Why the police should themselves take so much advantage, and rightly, of the opportunity provided to them of serving in other spheres after they have served their full time in the police and yet take exception to a man who has served his country in the Royal Air Force taking a job such as this after he has retired from the Air Force, I just do not know. I cannot understand that attitude of mind at all. Let us assume that the objection is not to an ex-Service man being appointed, but merely to the appointment of someone who has not had experience of the police service. Again we are brought up against the fact that the policemen themselves take advantage of the same opportunities, although I think it would be unfair of me to recite the sort of jobs that are taken by retired police officers.

I have got to know representatives of the policemen in Scotland very well in the last few years. I occasionally preside over the Police Council, when I meet spokesmen for all ranks in the service, and I regard them as very reasonable people. I am, therefore, surprised that they should have protested and complained to Members of Parliament about my right hon. Friend having made this appointment. Perhaps I should take this opportunity of saying that the police force generally in Scotland are doing a very commendable job of work at the present time. True, they are short staffed, but nobody really thinks that the appointment of Air Vice-Marshal Graham as Commandant of the Police College will have any adverse effect on recruitment. I do not think that there can be any considerable discontent within the police service at the appointment of Air Vice-Marshal Graham.

Some people made a noise about it; some people did not like the idea. Of course, they did not; but I cannot understand their making a noise about it. I think that in this regard some people have been most unreasonable, and if I know the representatives of the different ranks in the police service in Scotland—as I think I do—then I am pretty certain that they would not make any protest about the appointment that has been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton said the salary was hopelessly inadequate, and that was the reason for the small number of applicants. I do not know whether some of my hon. Friends who have contributed to our discussion tonight would take the view that the starting salary of £1,000 with pension, etc., is a totally inadequate salary. Many of them would take the view that the salary given to this person is one that would result in applications from a wide range of very competent administrators.

Mr. Carmichael

Is it true that a number of people have been appointed to part-time positions by the Government at £750 and £1,000 a year with very few hours work per month to do? It is on that comparison that I say this salary is far too small.

Mr. Gilzean (Edinburgh, Central)

In view of the fact that this is an academic appointment to some extent, what are the academic qualifications of the person in question?

Mr. Fraser

He does not require academic qualifications.

Mr. Gilzean

If there are no academic qualifications, why should he be the head of a college?

Mr. Fraser

He is the commandant of the college. I can think of other colleges in Scotland where the principals are by no means equipped academically. I had better not mention their names, otherwise I might be accused of criticising the principals of colleges. As I said the other day in reply to a Question, the commandant's main duties will be to organise training courses for the various classes of students at the college and to arrange for the service of suitably qualified instructors and lecturers. I do not think one need have police experience to be able to do that. He has also to supervise accounting and other arrangements. I do not think it takes a person with police experience to do that. Generally, he has to ensure that the college is an efficient establishment. I proceeded to say that in organising the college and the training courses, the commandant will be working in close association with an advisory committee, of which the chairman is His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland, and other members of the committee are police officers representative of all ranks of the police service. He is going to be fully advised by a competent body as to the nature of the courses to be undertaken at the college.

Mr. McKinlay (Dumbartonshire)

I would have taken that job myself.

Mr. Fraser

We have had a useful discussion, but there it is. We had 72 applicants for the job and only seven of them had police experience in Scotland. There was a selection board appointed by my right hon. Friend to consider all the applications. On that selection board there was a local authority representative in the person of a county convener. There was representing the constabulary in Scotland His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, and there was a representative from the Scottish Office and from the Civil Service Commission. They made the recommendation in favour of Air Vice-Marshal Graham. Because of the qualifications that Air Vice-Marshal Graham had and his experience of college work, my right hon. Friend could not but accept the recommendation.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'Clock and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Half-past Ten o'Clock.