7. SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) Link to this
to the Minister of Police
Does she stand by her statement in December that “I am always saddened to hear stories where there has been a failure in the 111 system”?
Hon RICK BARKERIs it acceptable that it took more than an hour for the police to respond to a 111 call from a Christchurch mother whose 6-year-old daughter found an intruder in her bedroom and then they failed to do any sort of scene examination once they did turn up?
The Minister is advised that the call about an intruder was received at 2055 hours. This call should have been coded as a priority 1 for immediate attention; regrettably the wrong code was entered by the officer at the time, and the car was despatched as if it were going to a lower-coded case. The caller who took the call has not been debriefed at this point and is on roster, so the decision making around the priority code is still being researched. The Minister stands by her statement. All of these incidents are to be regretted.
Hon David Benson-Pope Link to this
Can the Minister tell the House what information has been received about the number of 111 calls received by police communications centres and how quickly those calls are answered?
The Minister has received information that shows that from the period 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007 the police communications centres received 660,000 111 calls. Of those calls, 95 percent were answered within 10 seconds and 99.5 percent were answered within 120 seconds. The Minister has also received information that shows that for the week beginning 2 March there were 14,521 111 calls, of which 95 percent were answered within 10 seconds—by any measure a creditable performance standard.
How is it then, following that answer, that the latest information made available to me through answers to written questions on police response times to priority call-outs is for the year ended 30 June 2005, because a new reporting system that was to be completed before the end of September 2007 got pushed back to the end of 2007, and is now due on 30 June 2008; how is it that the Minister has this information to hand today, but it is unavailable through the written questions system?
I cannot answer that question immediately, but I will have the matter investigated. What it does show to the member of the House is that the Government’s investment of substantial sums of money and extra staff is improving the 111 system. We have invested $45 million over 4 years. There were 362 staff members; there are now 507. The system works much better than it did previously.
How is it, if the system works much better, that a second problem occurred with the 111 system in the past fortnight, after an operator hung up on a customer who was reporting a knifepoint attack in a Bay of Plenty dairy without assuring her that the police were on their way, and when the police did turn up it was 43 hours later?
The Minister of Police has the highest expectations of the police. The police have high expectations of their own standards, as well. From time to time mistakes do occur. The police are not infallible, just as politicians are not infallible—like the politician who said without reservation that we would support our close allies Australia, the United States, and Britain whenever and wherever our commitment is called upon. I ask Simon Power whether committing New Zealand to go to war was a mistake.
Does the Minister stand by the advice of the former Commissioner of Police Rob Robinson that it helps to scream down the phone in order to get the police to respond to 111 calls?
That is the advice of the commissioner. I am advised that after the review and a substantial amount of investment, there is an ongoing programme of learning from mistakes—when they rarely happen—in order to make sure the system improves. We aim for our police to be infallible, but unfortunately like all the rest of us, the police are human and they do make mistakes from time to time.