The combination of half term, Halloween and bonfire night means this can be a difficult time for all the emergency services. However, over the years joint initiatives like Operation Roman Candle where the police, fire service and Cumbria County Council work together has resulted in a decrease of incidents since 2007. In 2011 there were 30 nuisance fires in Carlisle compared to over 70 in 2007 during the same two week period.

“This sort of partnership working really does bring positive results for all concerned,” said Pru, “and is exactly the sort of initiative I would be promoting as Cumbria’s police commissioner if elected.”

Barrow police reported a quiet night with few arrests suggesting the trend of falling crime during this period is continuing.

Pru said, “Various activities take place to further discourage crime, like police officers visiting schools the week before half term, the various councils putting on activities and events for people to enjoy and the official organised displays on bonfire night which are of excellent quality. The emergency services and council also work hard to remove any likely targets for arson such as abandoned sofas and bins.”

A good example of this multi-agency work took place recently on the Hallgarth estate in Kendal, where residents, charity right2work, PCSO Nicky Yates and councillor Rob Boden all worked to tidy the estate and remove any likely fire hazards.

Pru said, “This should be a time of year we can all enjoy but we all have to take responsibility for our behaviour and safety in order to make sure everyone can continue these traditional nights. We need to keep being innovative in the ways we prevent the tricks at Halloween becoming crimes or a nuisance to those who don’t want to be bothered by trick or treaters. For example Cumbria Police made available downloadable posters saying either ‘trick or treaters welcome’ or ‘no trick or treat’ I would continue this sort of innovation.”

Police authorities are currently responsible for overseeing the work of the local police force. Cumbria Police Authority has 17 members, nine of which are County Councillors chosen by Cumbria County Council and eight are independent members who are directly appointed.

On November 15th, people across Cumbria will go to the polls to elect their first Police and Crime Commissioner who will replace the police authority. The PCC will hold the police to account for delivering the kind of policing you want to see and bring a public voice to policing.

Pru said: “We are lucky to live in one of the safest areas of the country and that is partly thanks to the hard efforts of the outgoing police authority members. Our first Police and Crime Commissioner faces a big challenge living up to their example. We need someone who will be able to do the job from day one and I believe that I have the skills and experience to do that.”

The six questions were:

1. Will you make sure women report violent crime
2. How will you prevent the victimisation of women and girls
3. Will you make sure the police respond effectively and sensitively to women reporting domestic and sexual violence
4. Will you protect victim services, the specialist domestic violence services, rape crisis services and women’s refuges?
5. Will you support the development of specialist services to support children and young people affected by domestic and sexual violence and child sexual exploitation?
6. How would you ensure appropriate programmes are in place to address the issue of domestic violence?

Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here to talk about these crucially important issues. I first want to place my agenda or manifesto in relation to this subject as your potential PCC in the context of my own experiences.

It would be very easy to blithely trot out promises to you on each of the points raised within the programme, because that’s what political parties like to do. I am not a career politician, as a barrister I live and work in the real world, and for the last 30 years, I have dealt with almost every form of abuse against women and children known to man…..Domestic Violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, (and I include within this heading rape, exploitation and child abuse) and other forms of abuse such as abduction as well as forced marriages.

Can I clarify that I know that women also perpetrate these atrocities or assist in them, but they are very much in the minority, so for the purposes of this debate, I am going to refer to male today.

Unfortunately, it is part of the human condition that those who see themselves in positions of power will exert that power over others if they have the opportunity to do so. It is my experience that damaged, abusive men naturally see themselves, almost as a right, the dominant one within a relationship. When I am dealing with such men in my role as a barrister, it often comes as a surprise to them when I challenge their views and preconceptions about their role within the relationship or family.  Many such men do not have any self- awareness or understanding of their behaviour or the effect that it has upon their victims. Sometimes they don’t even care. As we all know, their victims often love them fiercely, although when you really get to the bottom of their psychology, if we are fortunate to see a psychological report on the family functioning, the love the women and children feel towards their perpetrators is very often actually a very unhealthy dependency.

I don’t need to quote the statistics to you, that most serious abuse, including sexual abuse takes place in families. The career predators of our country such as Jimmy Savile are thankfully in the minority, (I hope), although the emotional devastation they leave behind is utterly horrendous and long lasting, leaving their victims with deep emotional scars which last a lifetime.

I have found that there is a large amount of secrecy and shame in reporting abuse in all its forms. Often, it is only as a result of the police being called as a desperate call for help during a particularly violent attack that it becomes visible publicly. Or if man goes too far and causes serious injury or even kills his victim. Sadly, two of my female clients have been killed in the most horrendous way by their partners, and in one of those, cases, her 6 year old child was also murdered by strangulation.

Unfortunately, as we know women are long suffering, and will often only leave their partner after multiple and often increasingly more serious attacks. In spite of organisations such as Childline, it is my experience that children, especially young children seldom report their abuse to anyone, and it is often found out about in other ways, and often by accident by doctors, nursery staff or school teachers.

I was fortunate that I was adopted as a baby, and when I came to know my birth family in my 30’s, my own half-sister, aged then 13, who I fostered for a while when she was a teenager had been repeatedly sexually abused by her own father. Despite all the help she was given, she never recovered and she became mentally ill. Tragically, she died when she was aged 27 from an overdose of drink and drugs. Sexual abuse of children and young women is leaves long term emotional and emotional scars from which they unlikely to ever recover.

I am telling you this, because I want you to understand that I understand and know what women and children suffer and continue to suffer.

Within that context, I can now move on to the questions that have been set out for me to answer.

1. No-one can force women to report violent crime. However, the culture of an organisation starting from the top and cascading downwards is crucial in determining whether a woman or indeed a child feels that it is safe to report abuse. In order to feel safe, the victim needs to know that they will carefully and sympathetically listened to by someone who will understand their problems and their complaint will be taken seriously. As PCC I will ensure that will happen. What I would wish to do, in formulating the Police Plan for the next 5 years is to move Domestic and other forms of violence and sexual abuse up the agenda to emphasise its importance.
2. I will ensure that in spite of the cuts, there will be continue to be sufficient numbers of dedicated members of the force in the Public Protection Units who are properly trained to deal with these issues, and who will respond with speed to these complaints and where appropriate to refer them on the other agencies, and in high risk cases special Multi agency risk assessment conferences will continue to take place. I will look at whether more cases need to be referred for risk assessment.
3. There is already a great deal of working in Partnership with voluntary and the statutory services, such as the NHS, probation services and the local Authorities. I would ensure that would continue to flourish and grow. As we know in all cases, early intervention is crucial to prevent serious harm.
4.  Given the potential for serious damage to these services I do promise to victim’s services, and all the specialist domestic violence services, rape crisis centres and women’s refuges. These are all specialist services that should continue to be developed and supported. I do believe that we need to look at ways in which we can bring in expert assistance from psychologists and therapists more often to work with those who have been affected. I have found that it is all very well identifying a problem, but if services are not available to address the problems, then that person has far less chance of recovery.
5. A subject that is not a popular one is that of appropriate ways of dealing with perpetrators. The violent, angry men and the sexual predators move from one victim to another unabated. They don’t accept they are a problem to women and society, and they therefore won’t accept help. More often than not, they may only get therapy if they are convicted of an offence, and probation become involved, or at the other end of the scale they may get admitted to some sort of programme if are sentenced to a lengthy prison  sentence. What happens to the rest? What happens to those men who are never actually convicted?  I see them all the time in the family courts and they are a serious nuisance to women, children and society, but they carry on regardless. The result is numerous calls If I were elected, in my position as PCC, I would lobby the Government to invest in far more perpetrator programmes than we have now and to give family courts as well as the criminal courts the power to force perpetrators to attend courses designed to stop them in their tracks. These men are the first to complain about not having access to their children, and to blame the partners for that.
6. It may well be that with the serious cuts in everyone’s budgets and the police cuts are extremely worrying that we all need to work more imaginatively. I know that much of Cumbria is relatively safe, but there are some difficult areas, and DV and sexual abuse can happen in small villages, rural areas and in families from any socio-economic background.  I was with Patrick and Mary yesterday in Barrow police station and we heard about the impact the Government cuts are having on their morale, with less officers having to do more work.  The cuts are to deepen and their impact is likely to become more obvious, and you might think that that women, children and vulnerable children will not suffer as a result. I promise you this: Not under my watch they won’t.

Under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, the UK can decide to opt out of all existing European measures for police and justice cooperation, and may choose to then try to negotiate to rejoin specific measures.

102 Conservative MPs want the Government to withdraw from all European policing and justice measures. But 13 former UK police chiefs recently wrote to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister warning that pulling out of many of the measures would put public safety at risk.

These measures have been hugely successful in recent years in breaking up paedophile rings, preventing terrorism and bringing criminals who flee across borders to swift justice.

Commenting, Pru Jupe said:

“The Conservatives must choose what is more important: their dislike of all things European or keeping people in Cumbria safe?

“Some measures are old. Some are important but need further reform, like the European Arrest Warrant. But the police say that many are essential for our national security, public safety and leadership in fighting crime and terrorism.

“These key international policing measures are used by our police to break up paedophile rings, catch criminals hiding on the Costa del Crime, arrest terrorists and deport dangerous foreign criminals from our streets.

“Some Conservatives seem so blinded by an ideological hatred for European cooperation that they would sacrifice the safety of the British public and the rights of victims for it.

“We must put policing before politics. When crime crosses borders, justice must too.”

National & Local Successes/ Cases:

• Operation Golf, a joint investigation between the Met, Europol and Romania, which broke up a pan-EU organised child trafficking network. 121 individuals across Europe were arrested and 181 children were freed.
• Operation Rescue, where the Met teamed up with Europol to coordinate a 30-country investigation, cracking open the world’s largest online paedophile network. Over 184 arrests were made, and 230 sexually exploited children were released, including 60 in the UK.
• The EU-wide search for Hussein Osman, one of the failed 21/7 London bombers, who was tracked down and arrested in Italy and brought back to the UK using the Arrest Warrant to face trial within a matter of days.
• Jeremy Forrester, the teacher wanted for child abduction, was arrested in France under a European Arrest Warrant and brought back to the UK with days.
• The murder of the British family in Annecy in France is being investigated through a ‘joint investigation’ between British police, French police and Eurojust.
• An EU wide hunt is on for a former priest wanted for multiple child sex offences thanks to a UK-issued European Arrest Warrant.

Background:

Under the Lisbon Treaty, the British Government must decide by 1st July 2014 at the very latest whether the UK will remain part of all existing pre-Lisbon EU legislation in the field of police and judicial cooperation after 2015. The Government has promised a vote in both Houses of Parliament on the matter.

In August 2012, 13 senior former UK police chiefs wrote to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister warning them against pulling out of these measures (see letter attached).

In October, the three law societies and the UK’s Bar Council issued statement warning that pulling out of many of these measures risked damaging the UK’s fight against crime, see here and here.

The threat from serious and organised international crime and terrorism is growing. Today, these cross-border crime and security threats are recognised as one of the top threats facing the UK by the Government in the 2010 National Security Strategy and in the Government’s 2011 Organised Crime Strategy. The Home Office estimates that organised crime costs the UK up to £40bn a year (£1,700 per household), involves 8,000 criminal gangs and nearly 40,000 gangsters. And advances in travel, the internet and freedom of movement mean that the opportunities for serious criminals, whether rapists, murderers or child sex offenders, to escape British justice by fleeing and hiding abroad are huge.

Over the last 15 years, international police, counter-terrorism and justice co-operation across borders has evolved into a highly effective and mainstreamed tool kit that enable our law enforcement authorities to crack down on serious and organised crime and terrorism. Today, British law enforcement authorities use and rely on these tools on a daily basis to keep the public safe. The European Arrest Warrant has been used to extradite over 4,000 dangerous foreign criminals from our streets to face justice abroad, and bring back over 700 of the UK’s most wanted serious crimes back to face British justice here. They share information, intelligence and best practice with their European counterparts on a daily basis through a highly developed set of EU cross-border police and judicial networks, databases and via EU agencies such as Europol and Eurojust. And they use EU measures to work increasingly closely with other national forces and European agencies whether it is on joint operations, criminal intelligence analysis or complex cross-border prosecutions.

YouGov polling released in July 2012 shows that 77% of the British public fully support European cooperation on counter-terrorism, policing and border security. A tiny 9% of the public think the UK shouldn’t cooperate with Europe on these threats at all. See page 29 here: http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Europe/0712ch_yougov_survey_0.pdf

Today, there are literally hundreds of UK success stories using this European legislation both to combat organised criminal activity involving online paedophilia, human trafficking, drug smuggling, cybercrime, fraud, counterfeiting and terrorism, and to extradite foreign criminals to face justice for crimes committed abroad, and repatriate to the UK those suspected of committing serious crimes here, covering rape, murder, child sex offenders, violent offences, white collar crime and benefit fraud. Britain is significantly safer and more secure from crime and terrorism today as a result of these measures.

Commenting, Pru said: “No one should have to live in fear of physical assault. As Police and Crime Commissioner protecting women from violence will be a top priority for me and for Cumbria police if I am elected.

“I am proud that Liberal Democrats have put protecting vulnerable women at the top of the Coalition Government’s agenda too.

“We have put millions into measures to prevent domestic violence, rape victim support and introducing measures to protect vulnerable girls from violence and exploitation.”

Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government have introduced a host of measures to protect vulnerable women. These include:

•  Allocated more than £28m for specialist services to tackle violence against women
• Made up to £3.5m per year available for rape support centres
• In 2011 the Government launched the Teenage Rape Campaign; the aim of this campaign was to prevent teenagers from becoming victims and perpetrators of sexual violence and abuse. It encouraged teenagers to re-think their views on rape, sexual assault, violence and consent and direct them to places for help and advice.
• Published an Action Plan which focuses on preventing violence from happening, supporting victims where violence does occur and ensuring that those responsible are brought to justice
• Raised awareness within BAME groups of the options available to victims of domestic violence.
• Ring-fenced £40m of stable funding to 2015 for specialist services to tackle violent and sexual abuse against women and girls.
• The campaign website This is Abuse, offers information, support and advice to teenagers. It also gives them a safe place to discuss anonymously the issues raised with their peers.
• The leaflet ‘Do you know if your teenager is in an abusive relationship’ is available for parents to download from the Home Office website. We also produced campaign support materials, such as business cards, a leaflet for parents and carers, and a DVD with campaign adverts which we available for partners in order to support the campaign in their local areas. We have distributed over 92,000 items.
• The Department for Education is currently reviewing personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education and as a part of that we are strengthening the teaching of relationships, positive parenting and sexual consent.
• Commissioned the Bailey Review to tackle sexualisation in the media. Action includes consulting on an age-rating system for music videos; a new system of age classification for video games; and a new Code of Practice from the four main internet service providers to make it easier to enable parental controls.
• Published the Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation Action Plan, which includes action to deliver training for frontline police officers in recognising child sexual exploitation and to respond appropriately. This includes making sure that child sexual abuse issues are included within wider investigation training on child abuse.
• Refocused on identifying and preventing young people from becoming exploited through child prostitution.
• Published guidance which stated that under-18s involved in prostitution will always be treated as victims by both the police and the CPS.
• Modernised the training of UK Border Agency staff to better understand and improve the experience of women in the asylum system and to identify possible victims of human trafficking.
• Changed CPS guidance. Women who retract evidence in the face of demonstrable intimidation should be protected from ‘false allegation’ charges against them as a result.
• Distributed over 92,000 pieces of support material to guide parents, teenagers and local communities on how to deal with potentially dangerous relationships, and we are reviewing PSHE education to include guidance about stable, loving partnerships.
• Published the Department of Health Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Children. This involves improving awareness and recognition of violence against women and children amongst health professionals.
• Instructed the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to produce guidance for Health and Social Care professionals on interventions for the prevention and reduction of domestic violence.
• Introduced, through the Department for Work and Pensions, relaxed job seeking conditions for claimants of JSA who are victims of actual or threatened domestic violence.
• Criminalised Forced Marriage and provided specialist help to victims of forced marriage
• Piloting a ‘National Ugly Mugs Scheme,’ allowing sex-workers to pool information to identify dangerous individuals
• Publishing material to help local areas in identifying and tackling local issues.
• Using the Home Office’s Review of Effective Practice to establish new ways for sex-workers to report crimes to the local Police.
• Opted into the EU Directive on Human Trafficking, a vital step in increasing the protection available to the victims of trafficking and in helping them to achieve justice
• On 8 June 2012 we signed the Council of Europe’s convention on preventing domestic violence which was widely welcomed

Liberal Democrat Police Commissioner candidate Pru Jupe was joined by Cumbrian MP Tim Farron and Chair of Parliament’s Justice Select Committee Sir Alan Beith MP to launch her ‘no police front desk closure’ pledge as part of a wider manifesto launch.

Pru’s pledges to the Cumbrian public in November are clear, honest and simple:
• No cuts in police numbers
• A visible police presence in every community
• Keeping the police’s share of the council tax down
• A pledge to not use private companies like G4S to do front line policing work

And a pledge to not close police front desks, last Friday the Home Secretary Theresa May said that the G4S Olympics security fiasco shouldn’t discourage police forces from putting more of their services into the hands of the private sector. Pru believes that the Police should not be opened up to competition and has called on the other candidates to make the same commitment.

Pru has also committed to stopping front desk closures and to look at re-opening others that were axed by working with other public sector bodies.

Pru said: “My pledges are clear, open and honest. I am running in this election because I have the skills and expertise to make our community even safer and to cut crime. I am pledging to keep front desks open, keep your council tax low and get police into our villages and towns. This is what people have told me they want and this is what I am promising to do.”

Commenting Tim said: “Pru is the best qualified person to be our first commissioner. She is the only candidate with a professional law and order background – a police station solicitor and now a barrister who focuses on helping vulnerable children and families.

“Even if Pru wasn’t a Lib Dem, I’d vote for her – she is the outstanding choice to fight for our community and protect policing.”

Sir Alan Beith added: “I was delighted to meet Pru and hear about her priorities. They are clear and honest – she wants the Police to be out on the beat, seen by the community and arresting criminals. I am pleased to be able to endorse Pru. She will be a fantastic police commissioner for Cumbria.”

Last year the domestic violence rate was double the burglary rate. Two women are killed by partners or former partners every week. However in over 90% of incidents little or no further action was taken against the perpetrator and little is done to prevent repeat violence.

Pru said: “During this campaign I pledge to do three things, improve police visibility and bring bobbies back to our towns and villages, secondly I promise to listen to local residents and make their voices heard and thirdly, I will work to end the scourge of violence against women.

“Rather than announce a policy document which has been written by some special political advisor in London, I want to ask the Cumbrian people for their views and ideas and work with them to build a policy that works for us. This is how I will work if elected; I will listen and then lead.”

Cumbria Police is currently working with Cable & Wireless to resolve a problem with the non-emergency police phone number, 101. Many callers have been experiencing a constant ‘engaged’ tone or may be informed that the system is unable to identify the caller.
Cable & Wireless are working to rectify the problem as soon as possible and as they do so, callers can contact police on the old 0845 33 00 247 number in non-emergency situations.

The police ask that people only use ‘999’ in emergencies.

Cllr Pru Jupe said: “This is the second time this has happened within a month. It’s really disgraceful. Vulnerable people could be suffering as a result. The fact is that is Cable and Wireless cannot deliver the service they are expected to deliver for this vital service provided by our police force, and then alternative providers should be explored!”