Police Grant Report — House of Commons, 2022-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is completely right: a third of the extra funding now comes from the council tax precept. That is a very high proportion Total crime went up 14% over the past two years—contrary to what the Prime Minister said in this place last week, for which he has been criticised by the UK Statistics Authority. As we heard earlier in Prime Minister’s questions, there are 14,000 cases of fraud every day—although the Prime Minister and the Government do not count them as real crime. Arrests are down and prosecutions are at their lowest levels. Just one in 50 burglaries result in a charge and, shamefully, only 1.3% of reported rapes lead to a charge. Criminals are getting away with it A proper plan backed by proper investment has never been more important, yet we yet have a demoralised police workforce who have declared no confidence in the Home Secretary. Pay in real terms is lower than it was in 2010. Despite the uplift that has already taken place, the total police workforce has more than 17,000 fewer people in it than it had in 2010. The number of police leaving the service with mental health problems is high. Neighbourhood policing is decimated, with nearly 50% of police community support officers gone and police staff cut Only 400 of the first tranche of 6,000 new police officers were deployed in neighbourhood roles. Police officers are backfilling vital police staff roles because forces do not have the budgets to pay the salaries of the number of police staff they need. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has said, despite the uplift many areas will still end up with fewer officers than they had in 2010. Merseyside will be 456 officers short and the West Midlands will be 1,000 officers short. This is the woeful context in which we debate the police grant The overriding sense I take from the police grant report is the total lack of any meaningful ambition to come even close to fixing some of the challenges we face, and the lack of any kind of vision or plan from the Home Office to tackle crime and its causes. It is a woeful attempt to make up for a decade of cuts by heaping the tax burden on to local council tax payers through the precept Budgets have started to increase, but they are not inflationary increases. We are not back to 2010 levels in real terms. Once money for new officers is counted out of the figures, direct funding to PCCs is rising by only 4.8% at a time when inflation is rising steeply and is predicted to reach 6% in the spring. That means the Tories’ failure to keep inflation down will hit day-to-day police budgets and the police’s ability to keep communities safe While police officers across the country recover from the pandemic, they will be paying higher national insurance and higher energy and petrol costs. Officers and staff will see less value in their income because of inflation. The Government are also demanding £80 million in efficiency savings on top of it all. Members should not just take my word for it; Gloucestershire’s Conservative PCC, Chris Nelson, has had to admit that his manifesto pledge to add 300 officers is "unachievable," adding that he would be "jolly lucky" to achieve it In Merseyside, it is estimated that inflation will cost £2.3 million, the pay increase will cost £5 million and the national insurance increase will cost £2.3 million, while Merseyside police is making savings of £2.9 million. The additional precept income is being used to cover the cost of pay, price inflation and the national insurance levy. Earmarked reserves are being used to balance the budget in-year, and there is a potential long-term increase in expensive police officers sitting behind desks to cover crucial police staff roles With these kinds of pressures, how can arrests and prosecutions increase? How can the police tackle serious violence, violence against women and girls, drug addiction and all the other pressures with the strength we expect? That is Conservative Britain The Government expect more and more police funding to come from local taxpayers, but there is a gross inequality in this overreliance on the precept because it is the most deprived communities, those with the fewest band D properties, that will get the least. There should be no winners and losers when it comes to public safety Northumbria has the lowest band D precept, and just 18% of Northumbria police’s funding came from the precept in 2021-22, whereas Surrey police got 55% of its funding from the precept. Budget pressures will be even greater if PCCs are not able to bring in as much as the Government have projected from the council tax precept, as the £296 million increase depends on every PCC making full use of the flexibility to increase the precept. Even if they all do so, as we think they will all be forced into doing, it means more tax rises on local people during a cost of living crisis We are debating police funding, so we should return to the age-old question of when the Minister will finally get round to reforming the funding formula. This was vaguely promised by the Minister before the election but, if the Government wait until 2024, they will have spent nine years dithering while police forces have had to make massive efficiency savings and local taxpayers have had to pay the price. Is there any chance of news of progress today This settlement should be a real opportunity to recruit a more diverse police service that better reflects the communities it serves. The annual increase in the proportion of black and minority ethnic officers is 0.3 percentage points. At that rate, it will take 20 years to reach 14% black and minority ethnic officers, which is the make-up of the country, so much more needs to be done, so much more Only one in 20 crimes leads to prosecution. The "Beating Crime Plan", whatever the Minister says, has no meat, no ideas and no strategy. It will not do to pretend that everything is okay with press releases that the UK Statistics Authority says "presented the…figures in a misleading way." It will not do to claim that crime has fallen because of the "Beating Crime Plan", when it has actually risen, and when certain crimes which reduced in number did so largely because of covid restrictions and are now on the rise again. It will not do to allow antisocial behaviour to blight people’s lives, serious violence to make a generation of young people fearful, and women and girls to continue to be the victims of violence and abuse We need a properly funded police service, an economy that functions and leadership from the Government. That is what the public expect. A Labour Government would put victims first and ensure that every neighbourhood where people are frightened and afraid has a new police hub and neighbourhood prevention teams, bringing together police, community support officers, youth workers and local authority staff. Labour’s record in government shows that, unlike this Government, we can be trusted on policing and crime. By the time we left government, there were 6 million fewer crimes than in 1997. It took us years to build up neighbourhood policing, and this Government are spending their years undoing that good work The Opposition will not vote against the plans, because some funding is better than no funding, despite the poor economic conditions that the Conservatives have created, which will mean that the money does not go anywhere near as far as we need. This Government, like the two Conservative Governments before them, are failing to deliver on crime. They are failing to bring down total crime, failing to deliver justice to victims, failing to rebuild neighbourhood policing and now failing to control the inflation hitting day-to-day police budgets. They should go back to the drawing board and try again: "Must do better."