Police Employer Pension Contributions — House of Commons, 2018-11-14
Topic: Law and Crime
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for that intervention. I have known the hon. Gentleman for many years, including before I was elected to this place, in my previous role as president of the National Union of Students, and I know that when he says he is prepared to vote against his own Government he genuinely means it, not out of disloyalty to his party, but out of loyalty to the interests of his constituents and our country. I could make the point that the Government Benches are almost entirely empty, but we know that that would be unfair because Adjournment debates are very rarely well attended and this one is better attended than most. But the truth is that Government Whips know that, even in parliamentary prime time, in debates about police budgets and employer pension contributions in particular, they have to struggle and strong-arm to get loyal Back Benchers in to defend the indefensible. Conservative Members know this is an indefensible position and that the consequence of these changes to employer pension contributions will be to cost police numbers in their constituencies, and which constituency MP in their right mind would, no matter what the size of their majority and however secure they might feel about their own electoral prospects, want to come here to defend police cuts that will affect public safety in their own constituencies? No one wants to do that; it is not why we come into politics We must see the budgetary pressures presented by changes to employer pension contributions in the context of what has happened to policing budgets more generally. The hon. Gentleman mentioned police numbers in Humberside, and we do not have a happy situation in my city either—our capital city. The Metropolitan police have had to grapple with budget cuts amounting to more than £1 billion. Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and in Westminster Hall debates and try to justify their budget decisions. They try to pass the buck by blaming the Mayor of London for the police cuts, but the truth is that when central Government are cutting funding to local policing on the scale that they have done, there is only so much that Mayors and police and crime commissioners can do to offset the impact of those cuts The Home Secretary has finally acknowledged that cuts have consequences, and we are seeing those consequences in the rising violent crime in my constituency, across our city and across the country. The Government consistently attack the Mayor of London and try to make this a party political issue, but the facts speak for themselves. It is not just in Labour-led cities that violent crime is rising; it is rising in the leafy Tory-led shires. Violent crime has doubled in counties such as Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in the past three years. People do not have to be experts to understand the obvious: if there are fewer police on the streets to catch criminals and deter criminal activity, crime will rise. This applies not only to violent crime but to motor vehicle crime, for example, and it is leading to people feeling less safe and secure in their communities. It is changing people’s way of life. They do not want to go out of their homes or run errands of an evening because they are afraid of being mugged or attacked. That is the reality Every time I speak on policing in this House and publish the video on my Facebook page or on Twitter, it goes viral because people are really concerned about this. They cannot understand it. As one now former Conservative councillor in my borough told me, they cannot understand why any Government would cut policing to this extent. Before the local elections this year, even a Conservative councillor told me that Conservative voters were saying, "We know there are difficult choices to be made; we expect the Government to be tightening their belt, but we do not expect a Conservative Government to cut policing in the way they have."