Police Covenant Annual Report
Sarah Jones Excerpts(3 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
I am pleased to announce that the first annual report for the police covenant under this Government, has today been laid before Parliament. The report, the third since the creation of the police covenant, will also be available on gov.uk.
The police covenant demonstrates a recognition by Government, policing and society of the sacrifices involved in police work. The covenant sets out to ensure that members of the police workforce suffer no detriment as a result of their role.
As the covenant moves into a new phase under a new Government, we have reassessed the priorities for delivery to ensure the work is better focused on the needs of the workforce, and to reflect the evolving realities of policing. This means that, as the covenant progresses further, there will be a greater emphasis on supporting forces to enact consistent policies and systems, setting a minimum standard of provision, and a renewed focus on how the actions taken address specific identified disadvantages.
This annual report reflects this new focus, highlighting not only the progress made so far, but also how the work of the covenant can improve police health and wellbeing in future.
It is my ambition, and that of the Government as a whole, that the covenant should leave the police workforce in no doubt that we are on your side and will support you. You do so much to protect us, it is only right that we protect you.
This work has already begun.
The chief medical officer for policing has ensured greater cohesion between the work of the covenant and the work of the NHS. Police awareness training for GPs has been implemented, highlighting issues better than ever before. A new national health and wellbeing strategy has been created, ensuring that, for the first time, a coherent and comprehensive approach is adopted by forces. This work will deliver improvements in health and wellbeing provision across the board.
And there have been great strides forward in the monitoring and addressing of assaults against officers and staff, and in the handling of fatigue.
The national police wellbeing service, who have taken the lead on many workstreams, will continue to drive forward work to provide support to families and leavers, building on the success of their existing packages.
All of these things are to be welcomed. Yet, there is still much to do if we are to live up to the promise within the covenant, to ensure that the police and their families suffer no disadvantage because of their work in policing.
[HCWS1326]
Police Grant Report
Sarah Jones Excerpts(3 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
I beg to move,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2026–27 (HC 1638), which was laid before this House on 28 January, be approved.
Before I come to the detail of the settlement, I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition at Prime Minister’s Question Time following the stabbing at Kingsbury high school in Brent yesterday, and add our condolences and our thoughts. We all hope that those who have been injured will be able to recover, and that justice will be done in a very difficult situation.
I also want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women who work to protect the rest of us from harm. I did not need to become the Policing Minister to appreciate the debt of gratitude that is owed to those dedicated public servants, but having the honour of serving in this post has given me a daily insight into the remarkable work of our police. I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing gratitude to the officers, staff and volunteers who, as we speak, are performing their duties with professionalism, skill and courage. We are all fortunate to have so many brave individuals dedicated to keeping us safe, whether they be first responders turning towards danger, police community support officers immersed in their neighbourhoods, or staff working behind the scenes to track the latest threats to the public. That is why our record cash investment in the policing system for England and Wales is so important. We are determined to provide our police forces with the resources they need to continue their vital work, as well as support to invest in their future.
In 2026-27, overall funding for the policing system in England and Wales will be up to £21 billion, an increase of £1.3 billion compared with 2025-26. Funding available to local police forces will total up to £18.4 billion, an increase of £796 million from 2025-26, or 2.3% in real terms. Of this funding increase, £432 million will come from additional Government grant, while £364 million will come from police precept, assuming that police and crime commissioners choose to maximise the £15 limit. Furthermore, we have worked with a small group of forces that evidenced particular financial pressures to agree additional precept flexibility. The settlement also includes at least £1.2 billion for counter-terrorism policing to preserve national security and guard against the most severe threats, as is the primary duty of any Government.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
As the Minister is getting into the detail of the funding package, will she accept two broad points? First, the overall number of police officers in England has fallen on Labour’s watch. Secondly, because of cost pressures on police forces from other decisions taken by her Government, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has said that there is a £500 million shortfall in the allocation of funding from this Government to police forces.
Sarah Jones
With £21 billion going into policing overall and £18.4 billion going directly to our police forces, I do not accept that there is a shortfall in funding. More money—hundreds of millions of pounds—is going into policing this year than last year.
Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, which I suspect Conservative Front Benchers will also try to make, we have worked with police chiefs not only to introduce a big package of reform, but to remove the arbitrary headcount targets for officer numbers that local forces found so difficult to navigate. Those forces were pushed into recruiting officers and putting them behind desks to do jobs that staff could do. We are not going to judge our police on the numbers of people in different roles; we are going to judge them on their outcomes, which is why we are setting targets, driving productivity, and focusing on tackling crime rather than arbitrary numbers.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for the report we are debating. I think she mentioned that the figure for counter-terrorism was £1.2 billion. Obviously, we in Northern Ireland have a particular, critical role when it comes to addressing the issue of terrorism. It is still active in Northern Ireland—in a minor way, but still active—and we also have a border that we have to patrol, addressing issues such as immigration and theft of agricultural machinery. All those things come into the picture, so will extra money be coming to the Police Service of Northern Ireland through the Barnett consequentials to help us?
Sarah Jones
Of course, policing itself is devolved, but addressing the risk of terrorism involves working across the whole of the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Security Minister will ensure we are working very closely across all four parts of this United Kingdom to offer the support that is needed.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
As the Policing Minister knows, West Mercia police—which covers Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire—is a very good force in many ways. However, is she aware that West Mercia is about to see the first fall in police numbers in over a decade, with approximately 20 frontline police officers likely to be removed as a result of what the local police and crime commissioner calls a “shortfall in Government funding”, and that this will affect The Wrekin constituency?
Sarah Jones
To repeat, every force in the country has had an increase in its funding this year, and we are making sure we have the right funding to support our objectives. On police officer numbers, what we saw under the last Government was a reduction of 20,000 officers and then a rush to recruit 20,000. The result was, for example, a 60% rise in retail crime in the last two years of the Conservative Government—that arbitrary focus on numbers did not result in the right outcomes. We are interested in police outcomes. We are interested in driving down crime and preventing it, and we believe that we should give our chiefs the flexibility to understand what roles they need within their local workforce. Police staff are exceptionally important in many different roles.
Under the last Government, the number of PCSOs halved. That was not even Government policy; it just happened because they did not have a proper workforce plan and did not think about these things, and then in the latter years they did not allow flexibility for local officers. We believe chiefs can make the right decisions about their workforce locally, and for the first time—the Conservatives failed to do this—we will establish a national workforce plan, to make sure we have the right resources in the right places at the right time.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
The Policing Minister, who is my constituency neighbour, has referenced the different kinds of people in the police workforce and how police chiefs should have flexibility. However, over the past year, not only have police officer numbers fallen by 1,300, but police staff numbers have also fallen by 529. The number of PCSOs has fallen by 204, the number of special constables has fallen by 514, and even the number of volunteers has fallen. Every single number has fallen—is the Minister proud of that?
Sarah Jones
Knife murders have fallen by 27% and knife crime has fallen by 8%—there were nearly 4,500 fewer knife offences in the past year than in the year before that. We are focused on outcomes. The right hon. Gentleman will know that proper police reform involves looking at the staff, the workforce and new technology. He is a big fan of live facial recognition, as are we, and we are taking out of the system inefficiencies to the tune of £350 million during this Parliament. Money was being wasted by the previous Government, but we will strip those inefficiencies out of the system. Our reforms will focus on outcomes, and on delivering a local police force that will tackle the epidemic of everyday crime and a national police service that will tackle complex crime.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
I apologise for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of this debate, because I have a debate in Westminster Hall, but I need to ask the Minister a question. She talks about outcomes. Is she as shocked as I am that the Labour Cheshire police and crime commissioner has already spent £200,000 on two listening exercises, and is expected to spend another £400,000 on more listening exercises? The precept is going up by 6.7%, but the police force will have to make redundancies. Does she not agree that the money should go not on vanity projects, but on frontline policing?
Sarah Jones
I suggest that the previous Government would have benefited from listening to the public. There is no harm in listening to the public. Indeed, it is our role as elected representatives to do so. One challenge that we are grappling with through the police reform White Paper is how we make sure that there is accountability at the hyper-local and national levels. We need to make sure that we listen to our constituents and target the crimes that they care about.
Esther McVey
Following on from the Minister’s point, I noticed today that the same Labour police and crime commissioner has put up an advert for a senior public relations officer on £45,000 to £55,000, and there are other vanity projects. Surely that money should be spent on PCSOs and police on the ground, not on the PCC himself.
Sarah Jones
I do not know whether the right hon. Lady has anybody in her team to help her with communications.
Sarah Jones
Nobody? I suspect that she does have somebody who helps with communications; most hon. Members in this place do.
Sarah Jones
Ensuring the public know what is happening is also a good thing. The right hon. Lady will know that we have said several times in this place that we are abolishing the role of the police and crime commissioner. That is not in any way because of the work that they have done. Indeed, they have done a lot of brilliant work. I have some fantastic colleagues that I will continue to work with until 2028.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Is the Minister taking the intervention or not?
Sarah Jones
I suggest that we carry on that conversation over a cup of coffee another time.
We are also investing £1.4 billion in the wider policing system to continue our progress on adopting modern, cutting-edge technologies that will better enable the police to perform their most critical function of keeping the public safe. The Government are supporting the police in their ongoing fight against knife crime by maintaining funding for serious violence reduction activity in every force area. Alongside that, there is £28 million, through our county lines programme, to disrupt organised crime and protect vulnerable and exploited children. A total of £119 million will go towards our ambitious programme of police reform, in which we will establish a new national centre to support the use of artificial intelligence across policing, enable the national roll-out of live facial recognition and strengthen the way that data is used to support operational policing.
Mark Pritchard
The Minister is being very generous with her time, as she always is. I hope that she will also be generous in her reply. AI is already playing a part in policing, and I would hope that everybody who wants crime reduced supports that, but as far as I am concerned, that support comes with caveats. There needs to be legislative oversight to ensure that AI is regulated and not abused. When will the Government come forward with the legislation that was mentioned by the Home Secretary? Just very briefly on police reform, does she recognise that West Mercia oversees a rural and semi-rural area? In any reconfiguration, restructuring should recognise the unique challenges of rural police forces, as opposed to, let us say, those of the neighbouring force, West Midlands.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the two points that he raised in one question. On AI, he is absolutely right that we need to ensure—I hope this is now the policy of the Opposition; it was not when they were in government—that there is an understanding of what AI is and is not used for. Importantly, we are consulting on how live facial recognition is and is not used. On AI, a huge amount of work is going on in different police forces, and most areas have ethics committees and other such structures that consider and talk about the use of AI. For example, there are certain rules around the use of AI. It should never be used to make a decision or to pass a judgment; it should be just for giving information. That is very important. We saw in the recent West Midlands case how easy it is to end up making a mistake, and we want to avoid that.
On the reform point, we are baking into our structures the idea that, at the hyper-local level, everybody in the ward will have a named, contactable officer, and that there will be targets for 999 response times, 999 call-answering times, and response times for non-urgent calls. I have heard from several MPs that rural areas are concerned that where there is a larger force, they will get fewer resources. That is not the intention—indeed, it is quite the opposite. Instead of having 43 forces making 43 decisions, and 86 decision makers spending money in 43 different ways, we will make savings that will mean that we can put more money into frontline policing in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I am reassured to hear the Minister’s words, but I am not hearing how what she describes will happen. We have all seen what happens with a larger force. The big cities and metropolitan areas have a political way of pulling resources to them; it is almost like gravity. Something structural is required. The Minister may not have an answer today, but will she consider ways of backing up her hope, to turn it into something on which rural communities in my constituency can rely?
Sarah Jones
As the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), has just said to me, the two of us are from cities and we quite often feel the same way—that we do not always get the resources that we are pushing for. Everybody here will be interested in ensuring that their constituents get the funding that they need. We are about to set up an independent review on what the structures will be. The right hon. Member can also read the White Paper, which sets out some of these ideas. The independent review will be completed by the summer, and that will set out how many forces there will be and how they will work.
Sarah Jones
I will make a little bit of progress, if that is okay.
Let me say a little more about policing reform. Last month, as I said, we released the White Paper, which sets out how we will create a policing system fit for the future. Taken together, our plans amount to the biggest reforms for almost 200 years. They will see improvements to police governance, forced mergers to unlock greater efficiencies, and the creation of a national police service, capable of fighting sophisticated criminals at a national level. Those reforms are overdue. They will not be easy, but they are necessary. Our overarching aim is clear: to establish a new policing model, in which local forces protect their communities and a national police protects us all.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the challenges that we have always had in Staffordshire is that, because of a manufacturing site in Tamworth and because of the politics of Stoke-on-Trent, we have often had to deal with complex national issues around far-right activism and Hizb ut-Tahrir activism. With the increases for police forces, and given their national responsibilities, how will the Minister ensure that the local specialisms that we have built up in Staffordshire will continue to be deployable there? Sometimes, our neighbourhood policing is the first barrier—the first way of dealing with problems that can escalate further down the line. How will that knowledge transfer carry on?
Sarah Jones
Several people have raised similar concerns. My answer is that creating a much simpler system will make the movement of information, resources, people and specialisms easier, and that will be easier to maintain. We will be bringing together lots of different national bodies. We have the regional organised crime units, which do not have a legislative basis and are funded in a range of different, slightly peculiar ways. We have specialist units sitting in different forces across the country looking at different things, whether that is modern slavery or funding helicopters. We have this peculiar system that does not make much sense. By streamlining things, so that we have a national service, a regional service and local police areas, we can enable that flow of information and specialisms to be clearer. I understand my hon. Friend’s point, which has been raised by several people. We will certainly be mindful of it.
Graham Stuart
The Minister is being extremely generous in giving way. I met the chief constable of Humberside last week. As the Minister will know, it is the leading force in the country and has the best results, so local people are concerned about a reorganisation that could be expensive, and could draw resources away from a successful police system. How will those making preparations for these changes engage the chief constable in Humberside and others who are helping to set very high standards now? We do not want those standards diminished in the future.
Sarah Jones
The right hon. Gentleman points to a challenge, which is that some police forces perform brilliantly, and others perform less well. There is only one force in Engage at the moment, but in the main, forces will be good at certain things and bad at others, and that will vary across the country. Our aim is to ensure that we have brilliance everywhere, and we are working closely with police chiefs.
I think this is the first time that a reform programme has not had the criticism that we might expect from different aspects of policing. It was almost to the point that we sat back and wondered, “Have we got this wrong? Everybody is agreeing with us.” It is powerful to sit with police chiefs and with rank and file officers, as I did last week, and hear about the challenges they face and their solutions. We are suggesting the same solutions. It will be a difficult journey—no reform programme is not—but we are making sure that we engage with policing every step of the way.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sarah Jones
I will make some progress, I am afraid.
Many hon. Members have talked about the funding formula. In opposition, I regularly called on the previous Government to review the funding formula. As part of this reform journey, we will have to reform the formula, because we are changing the structures. I can reassure Members that we will do that. This year’s settlement represents a first step in our reform journey. We have streamlined the way that we distribute funding and have put flexibility back into the hands of police chiefs, allowing them to focus on the priorities of their communities and of this Government.
One of those priorities has to be neighbourhood policing, as it is the bedrock of the British policing model. A central aim of this Government’s agenda has been to restore neighbourhood policing after it was catastrophically eroded in the years before the general election. Our efforts are already having an impact; there are nearly 2,400 more neighbourhood officers already in our communities, and the neighbourhood policing guarantee is delivering named, contactable officers in every area, but we must and will go further. Through this settlement, we will build on the progress made so far.
Having listened to feedback from police chiefs, police and crime commissioners, Select Committees and His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services and others, we are removing arbitrary headcount targets for overall officer numbers. We believe that success should be judged not just by numbers, but by how the police deliver the outcomes that the public want. Our focus is on putting police where they can make the most difference, which is often in our communities, tackling the crime and antisocial behaviour that blights cities, towns and villages. We are therefore ringfencing £363 million of funding to get 1,750 more police officers and police and community support officers into neighbourhood policing roles in the next year.
Sarah Jones
I will carry on making some progress.
Through the continued growth in neighbourhood policing, we will restore the vital link between police forces and the communities they serve. We also believe that there is significant potential to revolutionise police efficiency and productivity. We are continuing to work with forces through the efficiency programme towards the target I mentioned earlier of £354 million of cashable savings by the end of this Parliament. As set out in our White Paper, we must explore further avenues to bring policing into the modern age and deliver better value. Meanwhile, new structures will remove duplication and the national police service will allow us to deal with the biggest threats nationally. This Government believe in doing things right once, not in 43 different ways, and not a single penny of taxpayers’ money should be wasted. By investing in new technology, taking away administrative burdens and moving officers out from desks and into our communities, we move closer to that goal.
In 2026-27, we are continuing to invest in the police, supporting them with a record level of funding to do what they do best: keeping us all safe. That is the first duty of Government.
Sarah Jones
I will not on this occasion.
Keeping us all safe requires a highly effective and efficient police service that is both equipped for the crime-fighting challenges of now and prepared for the future.
Ultimately,
“the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.”
Not my words, but one of Robert Peel’s principles of policing, as laid out almost 200 years ago. Those principles are just as relevant today. We believe that policing should be about keeping people safe. The visible presence of police officers on our streets is vital, and this settlement aims to get officers away from desks and back on the frontline.
Esther McVey
I thank the Minister for giving way; it is most generous of her. My chief constable has raised a point about Labour’s new Sentencing Act 2026, where criminals will not be sentenced for less than 12 months. My chief constable says that their force will now be man-marking criminals on the street, which will cost them approximately £1.6 million a year. Can the Minister explain how she plans to address that issue in costs and man hours?
Sarah Jones
Significant investment is going into probation alongside those reforms. As the right hon. Lady would expect, colleagues in the Home Office and I are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to ensure we are equipped to respond to any changes. It is absolutely true that it is often right for people to have non-prison sentences, whether that is tagging or other punishments. We can do some innovative work on that going forward, but we are having regular meetings with our police colleagues to make sure we are ready for the changes.
Equally, we cannot forget the staff essential to our policing system, such as the PCSOs working with vulnerable individuals, victim support staff helping people through the aftermath of crimes, or tech experts working in police headquarters to track stolen phones. This settlement recognises that and puts power back in the hands of local forces, allowing them to prioritise the right mix of skills for a modern workforce. We are giving the police the resources—up to £18.4 billion—to invest in this workforce and to supply them with the tools and powers they need to do their jobs.
We know that to people across England and Wales, what matters most is not what we say but what we do. We are backing up our words with action—restoring neighbourhood policing, driving down harmful threats and equipping forces for the challenges of modern crime fighting—but we will not stop there. We will maintain momentum this year and beyond, reforming policing and striving to give law-abiding citizens the safety and security they deserve. This settlement will aid us in delivering those aims, and I commend it to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Chris Philp
My right hon. Friend is entirely right. Only uniformed or warranted officers can make arrests, and that is why the fall in police numbers under this Labour Government is so shocking. They talk about neighbourhood police officers specifically, but that, of course, ignores activities such as crime investigation, 999 responses, and specialist officers who investigate, for example, sexual offences. When total numbers are falling, they focus on only one part of policing.
Sarah Jones
Does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the 2,400 more police in our neighbourhoods than at the start of this Government?
Max Wilkinson
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention—[Interruption.] I also thank Government Members for the many communications that are coming from the other side of the Chamber. When I hear the Labour party and the Conservative party arguing about police numbers, I just think it is an excellent advert for voting for one of the other parties.
If the Government are serious about restoring neighbourhood policing, they need to step up, get this reform right and get more officers back on to our streets. Ministers have suggested that the numbers will increase. We do not doubt their good intentions, but they will ultimately be judged on results.
We cautiously welcome the Government’s suggestion that they will assign a police team to every council ward, but the devil will be in the detail. So I ask the Minister—I am happy to take an intervention if she would like to put me straight, because we have asked a written question—will each council ward have its own policing team? Will it be unique to that ward, or will it be assigned en masse to several wards?
Sarah Jones
At the moment, we have a situation where each area has its own named, contactable officer. We are going even further, so that each ward will have its own named, contactable officer. These are hyper-local police.
Max Wilkinson
Based on the Minister’s answer, I assume that each ward has its own police officer and that that police officer has only one ward to deal with.
Max Wilkinson
The hon. Member suggests from a sedentary position that each police officer will have multiple wards. I wonder whether the Minister can clarify that.
Sarah Jones
To be clear, by the end of this Parliament there will be 13,000 extra neighbourhood police. The hon. Gentleman can divide that by—[Interruption.] Yes, police.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. The Minister is making an intervention on Mr Wilkinson, not continuing the debate. Please make the intervention, so the hon. Member can respond.
Sarah Jones
To be clear, PCSOs are police officers. They are not warranted, but they are police. We will have 13,000 extra police in our neighbourhoods. I would have to do the maths to divide that number between each ward, but there will be a named, contactable officer in each ward.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Before I call Max Wilkinson, I note that the Front Benchers will have an opportunity to respond at the end of debate.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker,
“The current funding system is complex, outdated and the product of legacy decisions rather than strategic design”—
not my words but those of the Government in last month’s police reform White Paper. I agree, which is why I do not approve of the “Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2026-27”. The complex and outdated legacy police allocation formula sees Cambridgeshire constabulary down at the bottom of the list of forces for police funding per head, and yet the Government are still using it. Since being elected to the House, I have called on the Government to change this repeatedly, and it continues to be an issue that concerns my constituents. Reliance on a formula based on data from 2001 maintains the existing imbalance in funding that the Government know cannot continue.
The Government have already committed to updating the police allocation formula as part of their commitment to restructuring the 43 police forces in England and Wales, but that will not take place for years, and it will be years more before we see any benefit locally. How will current recruitment and resourcing dovetail into the new force structures? What rebalancing will take place, and would it not have made sense to have done the work on future structures first, so that the road map to the new model of policing could be better articulated?
The Government are already on the hook to fulfil their neighbourhood policing guarantee. Two weeks ago, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners released a statement that clearly outlined that
“the settlement is only sufficient to fund the increase in personnel promised by the Government under the neighbourhood policing guarantee in part”.
With funding for hotspot policing already rolled into the neighbourhood policing grant, where are we with the recruitment of the 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and specials?
The number of 13,000 additional officers was first announced in February 2023 by the then Home Secretary. In March 2023, the number of full-time officers was 142,145. In March 2024, just before the general election, that figure had reached 147,745—an increase of 5,600. By March 2025, the figure had fallen to 146,442—a 1% decrease year on year. Exactly what progress has been made in recruiting the 13,000 additional officers? What is the baseline figure that this is being benchmarked against? Is it March 2023 when the pledge was made, is it March 2024—the most recent data available when Labour came into government—or is it March 2025, when the funding to recruit these officers actually came on stream?
I am happy to take an intervention from the Policing Minister if she would like to clarify exactly what the baseline figure is. No, she does not wish to. As far as I am aware, that baseline figure has never been clarified, and when I asked that question of the previous Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), I received a waffly non-response that did not even attempt to answer the question. So do the Government even know? Nope—nothing from the Front Bench.
Let me turn to the point made by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), about the number of police officers per ward. St Ives and Ramsey in my constituency has six officers in total, across police sergeants, PCs and PCSOs, covering 10 wards. In Huntingdon, there are eight officers for 11 wards. That makes 14 officers to cover 21 wards, so we are already seven officers down, and that is assuming that none of those officers ever has a day off, is ever on holiday and is ever sick. I do not see how we are going to gain those additional officers that the Policing Minister implies that we are going to receive under the neighbourhood policing guarantee in order to make up that shortfall. The APCC joint leads on local policing, Chris Nelson and Matt Storey, highlight that, as things stand, the maths simply do not add up, saying:
“We want to deliver the increase in neighbourhood policing the Government has pledged, but this can only be done if it is fully funded. Current funding covers the cost of approximately 750 additional officers, so it is unclear how forces will be able to fund the remaining 1,000 neighbourhood officers to which the Government has committed.”
Less than a year ago, we saw the Government revise down the neighbourhood policing figures. A staggering 31 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales amended their figures, having overstated them, resulting in a net reduction of 2,611 police officers and PCSOs—a 13% decrease. They had included student officers based in the classroom, not out on patrol, as well as officers double-counted on out-of-date HR systems. West Midlands police force had its true neighbourhood policing figure reduced by 62%, Gloucestershire’s was reduced by 65%, and Wiltshire and Suffolk had their figures reduced by over 50%. Is that 2,611 factored into the 13,000? The Minister referred to an extra 2,400 neighbourhood police officers, but the number of officers is already 2,611 down, resulting in a net negative of 211 officers; she will forgive my scepticism about the accuracy of the Government’s policing plan.
Sarah Jones
Just to be clear, there are 2,400 extra neighbourhood police officers in our neighbourhoods. Our policy is to tilt resources into our neighbourhoods, because the previous Government decimated neighbourhood policing. We are building it back up.
Ben Obese-Jecty
I appreciate the Minister’s intervention. I understood that point, but my point was that those 2,400 officers do not even make up the 2,611 by which the Government have already reduced the number of neighbourhood police officers by recounting the officers that we have.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(5 days, 22 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
We are ensuring that forces have the tools and resources they need to deal with rural crime by providing funding of over £800,000 this financial year to the specialist national rural and wildlife crime units. We are strengthening neighbourhood policing through the neighbourhood policing guarantee, including in rural areas, by ensuring that every neighbourhood has named, contactable officers, more visible patrols and a commitment to respond to non-urgent queries within 72 hours.
Sir Julian Smith
The reorganisation of policing proposed by the Government risks a double whammy for areas with already under-resourced policing, as they face further distance between themselves and decision makers. May I urge the Minister to look carefully at how the reorganisation will impact the sparsest areas of our country, such as North Yorkshire?
Sarah Jones
I am very happy to have more conversations with the right hon. Gentleman to reassure him on exactly that point. People in rural areas often feel that they get the short straw in policing. Our reforms will end the postcode lottery by setting central targets, increasing transparency and taking robust action where forces are not performing. Our local policing areas will be accountable to the right hon. Gentleman and to local communities, and they will be 100% focused on tackling the scourge of everyday crime.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
As well as Harlow, I represent a number of rural communities such as Great Canfield, Matching Tye and Nazeing. When I speak to residents in those parts of my constituency, they tell me that farm theft and fly-tipping are having a devastating effect on their families and their livelihoods. What is the Minister doing to ensure that we strengthen neighbourhood policing in those rural areas?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for representing his constituents and their very real problems. We are taking legislative action to tackle farm theft. We know that this scourge has been on the rise for some time, so we are ensuring that we can tackle it. Alongside that, we are introducing new powers and statutory guidance for local authorities on fly-tipping, and we are putting 13,000 more officers on our streets, in our communities and in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Sarah Jones
The last two Budgets have seen police funding increase by £2 billion, and the public have not forgotten how the previous Conservative Government acted. They slashed police numbers by 20,000, decimating neighbourhood policing. They then tried to reverse their own cuts and increase officer numbers to chase a headline, but they were not bothered that 12,000 of them were sat behind desks, not out in our communities. While Conservative Members have amnesia about their own record, the Home Secretary and this ministerial team are bringing the bold changes we need to reform policing properly.
Matt Vickers
Anybody listening to that garbage would not realise that there are fewer police on the streets now than under the last Conservative Government. Research done by the National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society shows the huge scale of crime affecting rural retailers. Since this Government came into office, shoplifting and robberies against businesses have surged. Does the Minister think this is because the Government have cut 1,318 police officers, or because they refuse to mandate tagging, curfews and bans for serial shoplifters and those who assault retail workers? Which is it—fewer police or weaker consequences?
Sarah Jones
In the last two years of the previous Conservative Government, shop theft rose by 60%—[Interruption.] No, it was 60% in the last two years of the previous Government.
We are taking action through the new offence to protect shop workers, which the previous Government failed to do. We are tackling antisocial behaviour with respect orders. We are putting specialist rape and serious sexual offences teams in every police force. We are taking thousands of dangerous knives off our streets, and knife crime is falling. This Government are taking action that is supported by the police—putting 13,000 more police in our neighbourhoods, and ensuring that they tackle the scourge of everyday crime.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
The murder of Martha Giles in 1959 was particularly horrific, and I can only imagine the pain and suffering that her family have been through, given that the case is still ongoing and there has never been justice. I am advised that decisions about opening or closing the National Archives’ records on the murder of Martha Giles are a matter for the Metropolitan Police Service and not for us, but I am very happy to facilitate the introductions that the right hon. Gentleman might want with the Met police.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I know that the Minister is a deeply compassionate lady. On 12 February 1959, Martha Giles was brutally murdered leaving her work at New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton. She left behind five children. Only one of those children, Mrs Edwards, is still alive today, and she desperately seeks answers. I know that it is not within the Minister’s gift, but if there is any way to convene officials and officers in the Metropolitan police, just to be able to bring some closure to this awful chapter, it would be deeply appreciated.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Member, and I again offer my condolences to Martha’s family, who have been looking for justice for many decades. I am happy to do what I can within the bounds of what I am allowed to do, and I will ensure that we make the appropriate introductions for him.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
This Government are restoring neighbourhood policing with nearly 2,400 additional neighbourhood officers in post since last September, and we are ensuring that every community has named contactable officers dedicated to tackling the issues it faces. Of course, the provision of in-person services, such as front counters, is a matter for local police forces to decide, but I want the police out on our streets catching criminals.
Lisa Smart
The community of Woodley in my Hazel Grove constituency has been plagued by shoplifting on the precinct. We have had far too much antisocial behaviour and recently we have had some really worrying violent incidents as well. Bredbury police station was closed by the mayor a few years ago, but we know many people want to access police services in person for all sorts of accessibility reasons and because it is much more reassuring to have such conversations in person. The police also tell us that they can pick up on things in person that they just cannot when they receive an online form. We Lib Dems have a plan for a police counter in every community, in places such as supermarkets where people already are. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that those in communities such as Woodley can access police services in person?
Sarah Jones
Every ward will have a named community officer whom people can get in touch with, which I think is the priority. The hon. Member talks about retail crime, which, as I have said, increased by 60% in the last two years of the Conservative Government, and we are taking such steps to address that. For example, we are scrapping the previous Government’s £200 rule, which meant that any theft in a shop of under £200 was not even investigated by the police, and making sure that there are more officers in our communities. I am sure innovative things can be done to make sure there is such visibility, but having a named police officer whom people can contact in their ward is massive progress on what we had before.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
Humberside police, and the trade unions representing them, have raised concerns about the potential closure of counters under Operation Balance. Further to the Minister’s remarks, can she offer any reassurance to my local community that they will be able to contact local police as and when they need to?
Sarah Jones
Absolutely. Of course people are worried about having access to police officers, particularly when they need them. That is why we are introducing targets to ensure that the response is quick and there when we need it, and why we are putting more money into policing. Police forces will have £796 million of additional funding this year, which is a 4.5% cash increase and a 2.3% real-terms increase. I am happy to work with my hon. Friend to make sure that our neighbourhood guarantee is delivered in her constituency.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
We are putting more money into policing. We are introducing respect orders. We are bringing back the rule that any theft of items whose value is under £200 must be investigated by the police. We are putting thousands more officers into our town centres. We are working with retailers to use new technology to tackle crime. We are introducing live facial recognition to get these nasty criminals locked up where they belong. I am very much looking forward to working with my hon. Friend, and perhaps even visiting her constituency at some point.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
In Aldershot and Farnborough, we have a brilliant police team, but recruitment of officers is difficult because of the pay difference along the Hampshire-Surrey border. Officers can earn more by working just a few miles away, leaving our local police team understaffed and overstretched. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to address those recruitment challenges, to ensure that we have bobbies on the beat in every community?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We need to make sure that we are paying our police well, which we have done through a pay uplift, and looking after them. The number of police officers leaving the service—not to retire, nor due to ill health, but because they were fed up with it—tripled under the last Government. We will put a stop to that.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
My constituents are concerned about the imminent closure of volunteer-manned Pinner police station, as part of a programme of closure by the Mayor of London that leaves the whole London borough of Harrow with no in-person access to the police. Thus far, the volunteers who man the front desk and I have had no response at all from the Mayor of London to our attempts to raise this issue. Will the Minister intervene to ensure that we at least get a response, and that the Mayor of London listens to my constituents’ concerns?
Sarah Jones
I am sure that the Mayor of London listens to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents’ concerns. We have increased funding to the Metropolitan police, and we are doing everything we can to reverse the increases in retail crime that we saw under the previous Government, and which we are beginning to tackle now.
David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)
On Friday, I visited St James primary school in Haydock in my constituency, where, after learning about the dangers of knife crime, year 6 children are campaigning to install bleed control kits in their community, in case the worst ever happens. Can the Minister please assure them and all my constituents that this Government are doing all they can to tackle knife crime, and will she join me in paying tribute to the children and staff of St James for their efforts?
Sarah Jones
Absolutely. I welcome the conversation that my hon. Friend is having with his constituents and the children, who I know are deeply worried about knife crime. This Government have a target to halve knife crime in a decade. Since the start of this Parliament, knife crime has fallen by 8%, and knife homicides are down by 27%, but we will not stop until we reach that target.
Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)
The Home Office has said that a new licence to practice will be required by all police officers. Can the Minister explain how that will differ from what is required under police conduct regulations, the police code of ethics and current police training programmes?
Sarah Jones
The licence to practice is being introduced to ensure that all officers, at whatever stage in their career, are getting the right support and the training that they need to do the jobs that we demand of them. We have said explicitly that we will design this with policing, so that we can get this right, but it is about supporting the police to do the jobs that we all need them to do.
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Rasheed Afrin, co-director of the al-Roj camp in Syria, recently commented that several ISIS-linked individuals have been repatriated from that camp to the UK. Can the Home Secretary say how many ISIS-linked individuals have been repatriated to the UK, and whether they were held in custody on their return?
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
I would like to pass on my heartfelt sympathies to the family of Khaleed Oladipo, who was tragically killed in a knife crime incident last week in the city of Leicester. I am sure that no Member of this House wants to see another life cut short and another mother’s heart broken, so will the Minister back my calls for the Government to appoint a dedicated Minister to tackle knife crime?
Sarah Jones
I am that dedicated Minister. It is my job to tackle knife crime; it is what I have campaigned on for many years. I am glad to say that we are having some success, but every knife attack and every knife murder is an absolute tragedy, and we will continue to do all we can.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The police officers and police community support officers in North Shropshire work hard, but PCSOs’ hours have been cut because of budget constraints, and there are no front desk services at all in my constituency, despite it having five market towns. Can the Minister outline how we will ensure better and more visible community policing in North Shropshire?
Sarah Jones
The officer maintenance grant, which kept the uplift in officer numbers, became a barrier to more visible policing, and actually the number of PCSOs halved under the previous Government. We are giving the police more flexibility, and we are putting 13,000 more officers on our streets in our communities, where they can tackle the scourge of everyday crime, and as a result, I think that the hon. Lady will get the right mix for her constituents.
Animals in Science Regulation Unit: Annual Report 2024
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) on securing this debate, and thank hon. Members for their contributions.
It is important to start by reflecting on the horror of some of the stories we have heard and some of the cases that have been reported regarding animal treatment. I question whether anybody in this House would want that to continue. I suspect we are all united in wanting to phase out animal testing as quickly as possible. It is understandable that there are Members of this House who are pushing the Government to go much faster than we already are, but we are all heading in the same direction and trying to get the same outcome. It is right and proper that campaign groups, Members of Parliament and others continue to push us to do everything we can, because we need to do that.
The transparency of the report was important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) said, we need to understand picture, and the more information and data we have, the more we can see where the challenges are. I agree with that point; we need more transparency in the system to make sure we get to where we went to be as quickly as possible.
As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), said, our laws are unequivocal that animal testing cannot be authorised where a scientifically valid non-animal alternative exists. That is the law, and we need to make sure it is implemented. It is a fundamental principle for us all, in terms of the care that we have for our animals and the need to avoid unnecessary harm. As the shadow Minister also said, at the moment, despite rapid progress in science, there are not validated alternatives for every area of research and safety testing.
Ruth Jones
The Minister says there are not alternatives, but there are. The forced swim test is a classic, as is the LD50. These need to be phased out; we do not need them any more. I gently encourage the Minister to tell us how we can phase these out as quickly as possible.
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for her persistence with me; I expect her to continue to be persistent. We can go faster with some things than others, and I will come on to the strategy that the Government have published, which has been broadly welcomed across the House. We want to go as fast as we can in the work that we do. Obviously, we are focusing today on the animals in science regulation unit, and the annual report that it published. It is not actually a statutory responsibility for it to publish that report, although maybe it should be, so I welcome its publication.
Navendu Mishra
The Minister is making an important speech. I am pleased to learn that pretty much everyone in this debate shares the vision of phasing out animal testing. I have two questions: first, does the Home Office have enough resources for tackling illegal and unethical animal testing; secondly, would she work with the MPs in this debate to make that report a statutory requirement?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for jumping on something I have said and holding me to account for it, which is very good. We had a similar debate to this one last week or the week before, and what came out of it—I will come on to this—was an understanding that the regulator is going through a period of reform and increasing capacity. Good things are happening in that space, but there is concern among MPs that that is not going fast or widely enough.
In the last debate, I suggested that we should meet as a group of MPs with the regulator, have these conversations and try to flush out some of the things that MPs are concerned about. The MPs who were taking part in that debate had not had the opportunity to have those conversations with the regulator, so I took back as an action that we should sit collectively and have that conversation, which I am happy to do. The reason I am not directly giving my hon. Friend the immediate response that he is asking for in terms of changing the statutory responsibility of the regulator is just because it does not sit within my remit. I want to make sure that hon. Members are satisfied that we are going as fast and as far as we can, and perhaps a meeting with the regulator would be useful on that front.
The reform that I had begun to talk about, which is overseen by my noble Friend Lord Hanson in the other place and was agreed last year, has involved an increase. Members have rightly said, “Are there enough people focused on doing this work?” We have seen an increase in inspectors from an average of 14.5 full-time equivalents in 2023 to 22 by March 2026. By expanding its capabilities, it is able to do more; the conversation that we would want to have with the regulator is about whether it is satisfied that is enough, or whether it thinks we need to go further.
The two-pronged approach of this Government is, first, to phase out the use of animal testing. I pay tribute to the campaigners pushing for Herbie’s law and I absolutely understand the need for pace and for us to be held to account to go as fast as we can. The strategy to phase out the use of animals, alongside a beefed-up regulator, is the response that this Government are taking. We want to maintain public confidence in our animal testing processes and in our research. As the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford said—I have now quoted her three times; I need to stop quoting her so much—we do need to make sure that the life sciences industry, which is important for this country, is not pushing animal testing abroad and that we maintain our standards here.
I heard the message from Members about the fear that we might fall behind our European Union and US colleagues in this space. I am very interested in working across Government with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Lord Vallance, who are leading on the phasing out of animal research work, to push as hard as we can and look abroad. I will take that back as another action and speak to my colleague Lord Vallance—I suspect hon. Members already have—to make sure that we are learning the lessons from other countries and not falling behind; that, in fact, we are keeping pace.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister will no doubt have highlighted the work of the Government. I know the Government are committed to phasing out animal testing, but the Animals in Science Regulation Unit report highlights the horrors that we unfortunately have in the system. Does she not agree that we need to work at pace to ensure that alternative methods are explored and implemented?
Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)
I am renowned for my generosity in the Chair and I am extremely open minded about how debates are conducted, but it is not really appropriate to come in two thirds of the way through and intervene when everyone else took the trouble to get here at the beginning. We are all busy, after all.
Sarah Jones
Thank you, Sir John, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Of course we need to go as fast as we can.
The strategy that the Government have published includes establishing a UK centre for the validation of alternative methods and 26 commitments for delivery or initiation across 2026 and 2027. It includes a commitment that from this year
“we will publish biennially a list of alternative methods research and development priorities to coalesce UK scientists around these areas and to incentivise partnerships between research organisations”.
In our most recent debate on this subject, we talked about this being an opportunity for UK science and technology to be innovators in this space and push forward new science. We want to go as fast as we can, and we will move as quickly as the science allows. Our commitment is clear: we want to work in step with the scientific community to reduce and ultimately replace the use of animals in research.
As hon. Members know, we have a three-pronged regulatory framework. It requires a personal licence—about 13,000 people have one. The procedures must form part of an approved programme of work, which must be licensed, and the work must be carried out in a licensed establishment. Our licensing is robust, in terms of the processes that people must go through before they do something as serious as test on animals. Even before a proposed project to test on animals reaches the regulator for consideration, it must undergo multiple layers of scrutiny to ensure it is justified and ethical, including from funders and animal welfare and ethical review bodies at scientific establishments. That is important.
On the work of the regulator, the transparency that we want to deliver and the changes that we have pushed through, we want to ensure we get this right. My noble Friend Lord Hanson commissioned the Animals in Science Committee—an expert committee that advises the Government on animal protection—to provide recommendations on improving the accessibility of the publicly available animal testing project summaries, and proposals are now being considered. That reflects our commitment to openness, accountability and continuous improvement.
Several hon. Members spoke about the point at which audits are made and checks are carried out. They are concerned about self-reporting. I heard that in the previous debate, and I have heard it today; that is an important part of the conversation that we need to have with the regulator. There is an important question about whether we are doing enough unannounced audits, and I am committed to going back and testing that. With the support of hon. Members, we can look at that properly.
As lots of Members said, 2.5 million procedures were conducted in Great Britain in 2024, so this is a big landscape and we need to get it right. I recognise the potential for error and wrongdoing. I want to ensure that hon. Members and campaigners are as satisfied as possible that the regulator is doing what it needs to do. There is a programme of reform under way, and we need to test it and see whether it is enough. I am committed to speaking to Lord Vallance. If any Members want to come to a meeting with the regulator, they should let me know; that will be important.
The fact that the Government have put £75 million behind the programme to phase out animal testing shows that we are putting our money where our priorities are. I know that hon. Members across the House will welcome that, but of course we need to go as fast as we can. In that vein, I again thank the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East for securing this debate and holding the Government to account on these very important issues.
Town and City Centre Safety
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for his brilliant speech. Apart from anything else, I want to visit the Hairy Dog and see all the wonderful things that are happening in my hon. Friend’s patch. I thank him for telling the story of his very strong community and its resilience in the face of the challenges we all want to overcome.
I want to praise the Members of Parliament who have come to this debate to represent their constituents. We are all reading, with increasing fury, about the behaviours of the former ambassador to the United States, and it is the MPs in this debate who represent the very best of what politics is about. We are in this job because we want to make our streets safer and our communities better, and to bring pride to the people we represent, and that is what Members have done in this debate. The snake oil salesmen, like those from the Reform party, who go on television and tell us we are a crime-ridden nation do not come to these debates to have these discussions. I am afraid they do not have the answers. The MPs who are present to speak up for their constituents and to demand answers, to demand better and to demand more bring out the best of what politics is for and what we are all in this business for.
I also want to speak in praise of our police. I recently met the first responders from the Huntingdon attack. Such bravery is quite extraordinary, and we ask that of our police every day. They go out and face danger, and we should always thank them.
The hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) and for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) seem to forget that as Opposition spokespeople they represent their party and the nation. They spoke mostly about Sutton and Stockport rather than actual national policies. I ask them to think about what their parties have done in previous years. I will take no lessons whatever from the Conservative party, which slashed 20,000 police and then, in a rush to bring them back, put them behind desks. For example, around the country we now have 250 warranted police officers who are working in human resources. We will put police back where they belong: on our streets.
I will give Members a couple of good updates before I tackle some of the challenges we must overcome. First, the knife crime statistics that came out last week show that since this Government came to power knife crime is down 8%. We have taken 60,000 knives off the street, knife murders are down 27% and hospital admissions are down 11%. The Government will not shy away from doing everything we can to tackle serious violence and knife crime. Violence is not inevitable; we will not accept it and we will keep bearing down on it. I thank all those who have played their part in tackling that epidemic.
As so many Members have eloquently said, we know that the epidemic of everyday crime in our communities drives a sense of a lack of safety. I can tell Members that there are now 2,400 more officers in our neighbourhoods than there were when we came to power. There will be 3,000 more by March, and there will be 13,000 more by the end of the Parliament. Our communities are calling out for officers to be in our neighbourhoods tackling crime and doing the things we ask them to do, rather than being burdened by bureaucracy, which we will take away through new technology in our police reforms. Officers and PCSOs are the people who will help us to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime.
Members asked me to respond on many issues, but sadly I do not have the time. It would be remiss of me not to point out to the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) that London will have 420 extra neighbourhood officers on its streets by March, and has received a £180 million increase in its budget this year.
Many Members talked about retail crime, and we are making changes in the Crime and Policing Bill that will help on that. Through our big summer of action, and the winter of action we have just completed, we have seen real results when there is good working among retailers, police and the charitable organisations that help with, for example, drug addiction, which is a driver of retail crime. My area has seen a substantial reduction in retail crime thanks to the persistent offender approach, whereby we go after those people. Some 80% of retail crime is committed by 20% of offenders, and most of them have a drug addiction of some kind. We have to join the dots and make sure that we give people the treatment they need and that they face up to the crimes they have committed.
Some Members talked about organised crime, and violence reduction units were also mentioned. I am proud to say that we are funding violence reduction units this year to increase their effectiveness. They do an absolutely brilliant job. We of course have to tackle the issues that lie behind the crime and not just the crime itself.
Members talked about what was happening in their constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) talked about the street wardens in Morecambe. Street wardens are an interesting model, as we have seen over the winter.
My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked about taxi licensing. I have seen some good work with taxi marshals who help to identify unlicensed taxi drivers and to protect and support women and young girls, who do not feel as safe as we want them to when they are out in our communities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) talked about economic crime, which we have talked about previously, and he was absolutely right. Many Members talked about the increase in the number of vape shops or other shops that we know are actually laundering money. I know the police are dealing with that—I have been on a raid with them to tackle it—but my hon. Friend is right that more needs to be done.
Members will forgive me for not having looked once at my prepared speech. [Laughter.] The Government are doing many things that are designed to crack down on crime, but I want to end my speech in time for my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South to respond.
I had the honour of meeting the family of Danny, who was murdered in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He wanted me to meet the family, and I did. We all know the horror that crime can cause in our constituencies, whether that is everyday crime or the most horrific crime. The Government will not rest until we have tackled the issues that our constituents put us here to tackle. I thank everyone for taking part in the debate.
Animal Testing
Sarah Jones Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles (Michael Wheeler), who has given us a powerful depiction of what happens when things go wrong. He highlighted the importance of making sure the Government ensure an oversight and licensing regime so that things do not go wrong. He touched on different areas of policy, to which I should respond. I will start with his stories of where things have gone wrong, the push for Herbie’s law, and how we go further and faster on the removal of animals from scientific testing.
We can all probably agree that we want to phase out the use of animals in science and the strategy that colleagues in other Departments have introduced to replace animals in science shows the direction of travel. There are calls to go further and faster and of course we will listen and work with colleagues on that.
Irene Campbell
I thank the Minister for giving way. The strategy is of course hugely welcome, but there are no timelines associated with much of the strategy. For it to work effectively and get us to where we need to be, we need timelines. Is there any indication of when timelines are likely to be made clear to us?
Sarah Jones
I will certainly take that question back to my colleagues who are implementing the strategy, and I have heard from other colleagues the call for a faster timeline. The science is developing, and my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles mentioned the transformational technology that we have and the opportunities for growth. We do not know the answer to some things because the science is not yet finished, but I hear the point about pushing for change as soon as possible.
The purpose of the strategy is to phase out animal testing. That is this Government’s ambition and intention. The relevant human alternatives that we want to replace it with have to continue to protect public health and product safety, and we have to be sure that replacements are able to do that. Uncomfortable though it is, we know that the use of animals in science has enabled us to develop medicines that we would not have been able to develop otherwise would. To replace that, we need to make sure that what comes afterwards is robust. It is everybody’s ambition to have a revolution in research and innovation in this country, and to build on that and use our expertise to make sure we go as fast as possible, but I hear the call for timelines and I will talk to my colleagues about how we try to do that. The strategy has a tiered approach to identify which animal test can be replaced soonest, and which are the easier ones to get done first. I very much hear the call for a timescale for a longer-term road map.
There is great public interest in making sure that we treat animals as they should be treated when they are used in research. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles talked a lot about the work of the regulator, and how we should take a robust approach to regulation. The regulator is overseen by the Home Office Minister Lord Hanson, who signed off on a package of reform to it last year, which my hon. Friend mentioned. My hon. Friend was slightly more dismissive of it than perhaps we would be, and I heard what he said, but there has been an increase in the number of people who are able to ensure oversight and a new focus through the reform programme. It has just begun, and we need to give it a bit of time to see whether it works more effectively. I hear loud and clear his calls for the Government to ensure that the regulator is as robust as it can be.
It might be useful to look at how the regulator currently works, and then we can work together going forward. I do not know if my hon. Friend has met the regulator, but it might be worth convening something with other interested MPs, to have a conversation about the reforms and where we think things will improve. The regulator is set up to prevent compliance breaches and investigate them. If non-compliance is confirmed, the regulator has a broad range of sanctions available. There is a conversation about whether it is using all those sanctions in the way that it could. The sanctions range in severity, and my hon. Friend mentioned those at the lower end, but the regulator does have more extensive powers to act.
It might be useful to have a conversation with the regulator about how we balance self-referral. Self-referrals often come in; we have very good and honourable people doing research and using the system as it should be used. I also hear the slight question about self-referral, and whether we are in the places that we need to be as much as we should be. There is a balance in the regulatory approach and how punitive the approaches can be. We want the sector to be open and transparent, so we have to get that balance right. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that. If we are disproportionate—if that is a risk—then work gets offshored and goes elsewhere, where the systems are not anywhere near as powerful as they are in this country. We need to have proportionality in our approach to non-compliance.
We also need to understand that self-reporting is not a bad thing, but a good thing. We want a culture of care that is respectful of animals. Most incidents of non-compliance are self-reported, as I have said, and the decisions taken after that are then proportionate. Where there are more significant breaches, the sanctions are there, and we could have a conversation with the regulator about when those sanctions are imposed and when they are not.
I thank colleagues again for raising this issue. We have a strict and rigorous licensing regime, which I am partly responsible for, both for the 100-odd companies that are able to test on animals and the 13,000 individuals who have a licence to use animals in testing. The regulator is going through reform and has had its functions beefed up over the last year. We have an ambition as a Government to end the use of animals in science, but, as a Minister, I will always commit to push for more and will always listen to my colleagues for advice.
The good takeaways from this debate are that we need to understand where the regulator is coming from a bit more, what the balance is for proportionality, how we can all move forward, and, having heard the calls for more timeliness in ending the use of animals in testing, how we can work with colleagues across the Government to deliver that.
Question put and agreed to.
Police Funding Settlement 2026-27: England and Wales
Sarah Jones Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has today laid before the House the “Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2026-27” (HC 1638). The report sets out the Home Secretary’s determination for 2026-27 of the aggregate amounts of grants that she proposes to pay under section 46(2) of the Police Act 1996. Copies of the report are available from the Vote Office.
Today, the Government have set out the final police funding settlement for 2026-27, providing forces with the certainty and investment needed to strengthen neighbourhood policing, modernise frontline capability, and ensure policing can meet the demands of today and the future.
Overall funding for the policing system in England and Wales, including to police forces and wider system funding, will be up to £21.0 billion, an increase of up to £1.3 billion when compared to the 2025-26 funding settlement, representing a cash funding increase of 6.7% and a real-terms increase of 4.4%.
Total funding for territorial police forces and counter-terrorism policing will be up to £19.6 billion in 2026-27, an increase of £848 million compared with the 2025-26 police funding settlement. This represents a 4.5% increase in cash terms and a 2.2% increase in real terms for policing. Within this, total funding to territorial police forces will be up to £18.4 billion, an increase of £796 million compared with the 2025-26 settlement, representing a 4.5% cash increase and a 2.3% real-terms increase for police forces.
Of the overall increase in force level funding, £432 million is additional Government grant funding to police forces. This includes an additional £50 million to support the Government’s neighbourhood policing objectives above that announced at the provisional police funding settlement in December 2025.
The overall increase in territorial police funding also includes up to £364 million in additional funding for forces in England and Wales from council tax precept, compared to 2025-26. As confirmed in the provisional local government finance settlement published on 17 December 2025, police and crime commissioners in England will have the flexibility to increase the police precept by up to £15 for a band D property in 2025-26. This assumes PCCs make use of the full precept flexibility of £15 for English forces.
Funding for counter-terrorism policing will increase by at least £52 million to £1.2 billion in 2026-27. PCCs will receive separate, confidential notification of force level CT allocations, which are not published for security reasons.
The priority of the 2026-27 settlement is to boost visible policing and ensure forces can shape their workforce to meet modern crime demands. Every community deserves visible, proactive and accessible neighbourhood policing, with officers focused on the issues that matter most locally.
In 2025-26, the Government made £200 million available to kick-start delivery of 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of this Parliament. As part of the neighbourhood policing guarantee, every neighbourhood now has named and contactable officers dedicated to tackling local issues, with forces increasing patrols in town centres and other hotspots in line with local demand.
We have listened to the concerns raised by policing, and it is clear that the officer maintenance grant, as currently designed, has become a barrier rather than an enabler of more visible policing. A funding mechanism that, in some cases, has encouraged a higher share of officers in back office roles is no longer fit for purpose and limits forces’ ability to build a workforce with the right mix of specialist staff and warranted officers.
The Government will therefore remove the overall officer headcount target and replace it with a neighbourhood policing target in 2026-27. Forces will retain the flexibility needed to maintain operational capacity while shaping their workforce to meet changing crime demands.
The Government remain committed to the national objective of 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of the Parliament. This includes expected growth of up to 3,000 full-time equivalent by March 2026 and a further 1,750 FTE in 2026-27, bringing total neighbourhood policing growth to 4,750 FTE by March 2027.
To simplify the police funding settlement, there will be only one conditional workforce grant in 2026-27: the neighbourhood policing ringfence grant, totalling £363 million. Forces can receive this funding if, by March 2027, they increase the number of officers and PCSOs working in neighbourhood policing including those in training, in line with their locally set neighbourhood policing target.
We will make further progress to deliver the £354 million cashable savings target by 2028-29 through the police efficiency and collaboration programme. This will be achieved through focused efforts to increase policing’s ability to buy once and buy well and increase the amount of costs policing can recover for the services they provide.
The Government have published their police reform White Paper, which sets out our ambitious plans to modernise the policing system and ensure it is better structured and equipped for the future. This settlement underpins these plans with £1.4 billion of Home Office investment in the wider policing system which will:
Kick-start delivery of our programme of police reform with a £119 million investment in 2026- 27. This first-year investment will deliver new police capabilities: establishing a new national centre for AI in policing—Police.AI—which will enable the rapid and responsible adoption of AI across policing, national roll-out of live facial recognition, and investment to strengthen the use of data across policing.
Support the delivery of major law enforcement programmes which will modernise national mission-critical systems, tackling a range of threats and make our streets safer and without which policing cannot operate effectively.
Invest in tackling knife crime, through continued funding for serious violence reduction programmes in every force area, including in 20 violence reduction units, and over £28 million dedicated investment to policing through our county lines programme which has closed thousands of county lines, protected thousands of criminally exploited children and is delivering significant reductions in in knife stabbings in key force areas.
A reformed policing system will need a funding model that is fit for purpose. Changes to police governance, force mergers and the creation of the National Police Service require a new way of allocating funding between forces, aligned with these new structures. Through the police reform White Paper, we have committed to reviewing the police funding formula once police reform is under way and reconsidering the distribution of funding between local forces. The next steps of this work will be informed by the independent review into police force structures later this year.
This funding settlement reaffirms the Government’s strong support for policing and our commitment to empowering officers and staff to deliver safer communities and investing in a modern infrastructure and new technologies. By providing the resources needed to strengthen neighbourhood policing and maintain visible patrols, we are backing the frontline and enabling forces to respond effectively to local priorities. We are proud to stand alongside officers and staff in our shared mission to protect the public and make every street a safer place to live and work.
An attachment containing tables that document funding to police and crime commissioners for 2026-27, including police precept, can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2026-01-28/HCWS1285/
[HCWS1285]
Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 month ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) on securing this debate, and I thank all colleagues who have spoken today. I think it is apparent that everybody in the Chamber cares very deeply about this issue and about how we deal with the harm done to individuals, communities and society by drugs, and I hope that the same is true of everybody across the Commons. I am also very grateful to the Scottish Affairs Committee for its work in this area and for conducting its inquiry. I thank all those who took part in it and who have given us the opportunity to reflect on the issues that were raised.
In the short time that I have been the Minister for Policing and Crime, I have met families who have lost loved ones through drugs, and in my own time as a constituency MP, I have regularly seen the impact of drugs. I think that we can all agree that we need to do everything we can as a country.
Dame Carol Black, who was appointed under the previous Government to be the independent adviser on drugs, has recently agreed to continue her role, for which I am very grateful. I have had the privilege of talking to her about the strategy that she developed under the previous Government and about how we think it can work. We are delivering, as the previous Government did, on the recommendations of her landmark review, which was wide-ranging. It was not just about the enforcement side—making our streets safer—but about making our communities healthier and making people better, treating them in the right way so that they can recover and thrive.
I also want to welcome Professor David Wood, the new chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. His huge experience and knowledge will be invaluable, and we are really pleased to see him. We are committed to providing people who use drugs with the support that they need. There was some debate about whether we look at the role of drugs through a Home Office or a health lens; to my mind, it should be both. When I speak to the Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), she is very clear that she takes a public health approach to drug and alcohol addiction and treatment.
We are investing £3.4 billion over the next three years in treatment, sustainable recovery services and peer networks that can support people in recovery with employment, housing and education. The need for the holistic approach was raised by the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster). I think it is the right approach, and that £3.4 billion over the next three years will help.
There are new treatments and new ways of supporting people. I have spoken to the sector about how we make sure treatments are available not just for the traditional opioid addictions, but for new forms of addiction, whether that is ketamine or other drugs, and how we evolve slightly different approaches over time. The Home Office and the Department of Health meet together; I meet my colleague in the Department of Health who is overseeing all the treatment interventions. We want to keep on top of all the emerging evidence about what treatment is best, and we work constantly with operational partners across the country to make sure we deliver the right treatment.
On drugs harm, the need for interventions and the need to get rid of the criminal gangs that drive that practice, the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), talked about the county lines programme. That programme has had a significant impact in reducing harm as well as arresting criminals, taking them off the streets and shutting down county lines. Since we came to power in July 2024 the programme has led to more than 8,000 arrests and the closure of 3,000 county lines. Importantly, in that period alone 600 vulnerable young people were supported with specialist services to build safer futures. The criminal gangs exploit children and use the drugs trade to make money; by focusing on them through the county lines programme, we have had significant success in terms of drug misuse, hospitalisations and the actual impact on the criminals being arrested.
The National Crime Agency works tirelessly on disrupting and dismantling the networks. At the UK border, through intelligence with other countries and the advanced technology that we use, we are intercepting more drugs than ever. In the year ending March 2024, Border Force seized more than 100 tonnes of drugs—the highest amount on record. We are determined to reduce the number of drug-related deaths throughout the UK. We of course recognise the importance of evidence-based, high-quality treatment, and will continue to take preventive public health measures to tackle drug misuse and support people to live better lives.
In the response to the Select Committee’s report, I made the Government’s position on Glasgow’s pilot drug consumption room clear. We recognise the Scottish Government’s need to tackle drug misuse. We have talked already about the statistics on the number of drug deaths in Scotland, so I will not repeat them, but they are incredibly high and we recognise that more needs to be done. We recognise that where responsibility is devolved, the Scottish Government will need to tackle drug misuse in the ways that they see fit.
The Lord Advocate has issued a statement of prosecution policy for the operation of the pilot drug consumption room in Glasgow, as has been talked about. We respect the independence of that decision. I want to be clear that we have no plans to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act to enable the operation of drug consumption rooms in any part of the United Kingdom, but we are committed to working closely and positively with the Scottish Government.
We meet collectively. The UK Government lead the UK drugs ministerial team, which is a forum for Ministers from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That forum provides the opportunity for all four Governments to talk to one another and to come together to share challenges and best practice. The last meeting was in Edinburgh and hosted by the Scottish Government, and we will meet again this year, enabling us to talk to one another and to share information. Of course we will also work closely with the Scottish Government to enable licensed drug-checking facilities to operate lawfully.
As we have heard, chronic drug dependence plagues the lives not just of individuals, but of those closest to them. It is in all our interests to prevent people from being engulfed by that spiral, and to help those who have on to a better path. There is a determination from this Government to get it right and to look at the evidence. We are not persuaded to make any of the changes that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West and her Committee asked us to make, but that is not to say that we should not carry on talking about these issues.
The evidence-based approach that has been talked about and the review that is being done of the pilot at the Thistle are very important. I very much want to see what the evidence shows. I am committed to making sure we are always learning and always changing our approach. We met as a collective group of Ministers across Government to look at some of the problems in, for example, the prison system—we know it is a huge driver of drug use—and to see what we can do collectively across Government. When the three-year pilot of the Thistle is finished, we will of course look at that and will want to see what we can do in response. I think we collectively agree on the need to tackle drug misuse as a health issue as well as a Home Office and crime issue. This Government are doing both, but I look forward to continuing to work with colleagues in the days and months ahead to make sure we get it right.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
Rural crime is a scourge on our communities, and this Government are taking action to tackle it. We are improving the safety of rural communities through tougher measures on equipment theft and a crackdown on antisocial behaviour, farm theft and fly-tipping, backed by over £800,000 of funding for the specialist national rural and wildlife crime policing units.
Paul Davies
The most common and impactful rural crimes in West Yorkshire include the theft of farm machinery, fuel and livestock, incidents of livestock worrying, and wildlife and environmental offences. Increased funding for specialist units, such as the national rural crime and the national wildlife crime units, is welcome. They will help to co-ordinate and support police forces across England and Wales to target rural crime. What other actions can the Government take to help tackle such crime?
Sarah Jones
I am delighted to say that, since the last Home Office questions, the National Police Chiefs’ Council launched its rural and wildlife crime strategy, which we absolutely support. The Government are going further: new provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill will introduce powers for the police to enter and search premises for items that have been electronically tracked and are reasonably believed to have been stolen, and we will implement the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which will strengthen measures to tackle the theft and resale of high-value equipment, particularly that used in agricultural settings.
Terry Jermy
Waste crime—an increasing concern in rural areas—often has links to serious and organised crime. Just last week, the Eastern Daily Press revealed that although there were nearly 1,300 reports of waste crime in Norfolk in a five-year period, just two people have been convicted for such offences in that time. In one case in my South West Norfolk constituency, 250 bales of DIY waste were dumped on a farm, with an estimated removal cost of £250,000. Will the Minister tell the House what more the Department can do to tackle waste crime in rural areas?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend speaks about a very serious crime, and we must go further. Last year, the Government announced a huge crackdown on cowboy waste operators in order to tackle fly-tipping. To support local authorities, our Crime and Policing Bill will introduce a power to issue statutory guidance on fly-tipping enforcement, and there will be a new five-year prison term for waste cowboys. We need to crack down on that crime.
Ben Goldsborough
Heritage crime is a huge issue in rural communities like mine. My constituency boast some of the jewels in England’s crown—Roman town Venta Icenorum, Wyndham Abbey and the wooden henge in Arminghall—which puts us more at risk of heritage crime. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can train scrap metal dealers to be more aware of the damage that it does, and how might we record the statistics more appropriately so that we can give police the resources they need?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is lucky to have such wonderful places in his constituency. Of course I will meet him—this is a very important matter. We are supporting the work of Historic England on a number of issues to tackle heritage crime, but I am sure that we can go further, and I look forward to talking to him about it.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
In my constituency, car thefts and related burglaries continue to rise. Nationally, almost four in five car thefts go unsolved. This is not low-level rural crime; it is organised, highly profitable, and deeply disruptive and upsetting for families and businesses reliant on vehicles. Will the Minister set out what steps the Government are taking to tackle organised vehicle crime, and will they back the Liberal Democrat proposals for a specialist national unit to work with police forces, such as Warwickshire police, to crack down on car crime?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Lady points to a very significant crime. Through our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we will be making sure that there are more neighbourhood police in our communities. We will obviously continue to work with car manufacturers to make sure we design crime out as much as we can. I would be very happy to talk to the hon. Lady about any other proposals she has, but this Government are investing more in policing and cracking down on crime.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Happy new year, Mr Speaker.
One crime that most concerns farmers in Hampshire and around the country is that of illegal meat imports. Last year, I visited the Port of Dover, where I was shown some of the illegal meat that had been seized. This is not only a public health issue; it puts the UK livestock industry at risk of a notifiable disease outbreak, such as foot and mouth disease. If I were caught driving illegal meat into the UK in a lorry, the authorities would not have the powers to arrest me and would not be allowed to seize the lorry, but they would have to clean my lorry and disinfect it at the taxpayer’s expense before sending me on my way. Does the Minister agree that this is absolutely crazy and will she look at how we can equip the hard-working teams at the ports with the powers needed to provide a proper deterrent to stop this meat coming in?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman points to an issue that is of course very important. We need to make sure that we do not have illegal meat coming into the country. My colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and my colleagues on the Front Bench today will of course take these issues seriously. I am very happy to take this matter further and come back to the hon. Gentleman.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Happy new year, Mr Speaker.
Only one in 200 police officers in England and Wales is allocated to rural crime teams. In Cumbria, the situation is even worse: only five officers in 2024 were allocated to our rural crime team. Given what Members have said already today, is it not clear that people who live in very rural communities are subject not only to crime, but to an even more concentrated sense of the fear of crime, because they know that they could be 20 or 30 miles away from the nearest officer? Is it not time for the Government to think again about rural crime and make sure that every community, particularly rural counties like Cumbria, has a dedicated rural crime team that is bigger than five officers?
Sarah Jones
Our neighbourhood policing guarantee applies to rural as well as urban areas, and the increase of 3,000 in police numbers that we will see by next March will go across the whole country. The hon. Gentleman points to a very specific challenge. Just a few weeks ago, I was with Thames Valley police, who have a rural crime taskforce; the work they are doing and the expertise they are bringing to particular challenges faced by rural communities was very impressive, and I would like to see other forces following their lead.
Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
We take theft from commercial vehicles extremely seriously. These crimes are often committed by organised criminals who seek to profit from tool theft, and we are supporting law enforcement officials as they seek to disrupt these networks. Courts already have tough sentencing powers in this area, with a maximum prison sentence of seven years for theft and up to life for violent robbery.
Dave Doogan
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker—but unfortunately for the haulage industry, 2026 promises to be a year of increasing freight crime from haulage operators up and down these islands. Whether it is Alan Davie of Forfar, Taylor’s of Forfar or McLaughlan’s of Perth, who operate up and down from Scotland to England, when drivers park up at night, they are at risk of having their loads stolen. This is a growing problem that would benefit from there being an offence for aggravated theft from commercial vehicles. I have petitioned the Scottish Government on the very same issue and I urge the Minister to look at the matter.
Sarah Jones
While I am always happy to keep things under review, we currently do not think that such an offence is the answer, although that is not to say that there is not a problem—there absolutely is. I will shortly be hosting industry representatives to discuss what more is required to tackle this growing and significant problem, which the hon. Gentleman is right to identify.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
In my constituency, we have both rural and urban areas. I have had numerous people from rural areas contact me about theft from commercial vehicles, including in Quarndon. As we move forward with our police recruitment plans to get 13,000 more police officers by the end of this Parliament, may I ask that we ensure there are enough officers in rural areas to address this issue? It is particularly pertinent in those places.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. As I said earlier, our neighbourhood policing guarantee applies to all parts of the country. It is very important that we understand the particular challenges that rural communities face and that we robustly support our police, who are getting increased funding this year and will continue to be supported by us to ensure that we tackle these very significant crimes.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
As part of the neighbourhood policing guarantee, every neighbourhood now has a named and contactable officer dedicated to tackling local issues, with forces increasing patrols in town centres and other hotspots based on local demand. We have also made £200 million available to police forces this financial year to kick-start the journey towards delivering 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of this Parliament, including 3,000 by March 2026.
Monica Harding
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker.
I pay tribute to the work of the police in my constituency of Esher and Walton, who have got the rate of solved burglaries up by 84%. However, while the local police are doing a great job catching burglars, they tell me that the perception that they are unable to bring those burglars to justice is making it more difficult to tackle persistent offenders and is impacting on the confidence of local residents. My constituents were incredulous recently when the borough commander told them that two individuals charged with burglary in December last year had been given a date to appear for trial in September 2027. What conversations is the Minister having with her counterparts in the Ministry of Justice to increase the number of Crown court sitting days so that my constituents can have confidence?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Lady highlights a problem that we inherited from the previous Government, which is very considerable—we do not deny that. We in the Home Office are talking to our colleagues in the Ministry of Justice every day about how we manage the situation and increase the speed with which people are brought to justice. This Government want to see everyone who commits a crime do the time.
Luke Murphy
Happy new year to you and your team, Mr Speaker.
I welcome the Government’s neighbourhood policing guarantee, which puts named, contactable officers in every community, and indeed the increased presence of patrols in the Top of the Town in Basingstoke. However, as the Minister knows—we have corresponded on this issue—one of the issues that we in Basingstoke face is the retention of officers, with locally trained officers moving to higher-paid forces such as those in London. What more can the Department do, and what more can I do, to ensure we improve the retention of officers in Basingstoke, including to support community policing?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It was not just public confidence in policing that fell under the last Government but how the police felt they were treated, which affects retention. One aspect of the White Paper process and police reform is looking at how we train police, how we treat them and how we give them the support they need to do the job they want to do, rather than the bureaucracy that blights a lot of their time. My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we are working closely with the police bodies to ensure that we get this right.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
It is becoming increasingly apparent that West Midlands police retrospectively created a rationale and, according to remarkable investigative work by The Sunday Times, false evidence to justify their predetermined decision to ban fans from the world’s only Jewish state from going to a football match in Britain’s second city. Does the Minister think that the chief constable of such a force can possibly be overseeing effective community policing? How can he continue in his role?
Sarah Jones
The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the whole Government have been clear that we believe the wrong decision was made. We have asked the inspector to look at what happened in two parts: first, what happened around the match itself; and secondly, a wider look at the police role in relation to safety advisory groups and how decisions are made. We had been expecting that information before the end of the year, but it will be slightly delayed to take into account the recall of the West Midlands chief constable to appear before the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow. We need to wait and see what the inspector says, and that is what we will do. That is the right thing to do, because these things will be considered in the round.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
This Government are determined to tackle all forms of hate crime. We have a robust legislative framework in place to respond to hate crimes that target race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. The Home Secretary has also commissioned an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation to ensure that it remains effective, proportionate and fit for purpose.
Christine Jardine
I welcome the Minister’s comments, as I welcome the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy, including the confirmation that the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will commence in April. We know, however, that misogyny runs deeper, and attitudes and actions throughout society and on social media are damaging to women. As well as focusing on prevention and strategy in all these areas and tackling harassment, will the Minister outline the position on misogyny becoming a hate crime?
Sarah Jones
A review is being undertaken by Lord Ken Macdonald KC, who is looking at hate crime legislation in the round. I hope that the hon. Lady will understand that we want to wait for that, so that we can understand what those recommendations are before the Home Secretary makes decisions.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling misogyny, but I am sure that Ministers will be as disgusted as I am by reports over recent weeks of users of the social media platform X being able to create sexualised images of women, including children, through its AI tool, Grok. What conversations are Ministers having across Government to ensure that we clamp down on that vile practice, which should simply not be tolerated on social media sites?
Sarah Jones
The Home Secretary launched the violence against women and girls strategy. She, like my hon. Friend, takes this issue seriously. We are working across Government, in particular with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, on this issue.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and happy new year.
Women are overwhelmingly the victims of hate crimes online, but that is no surprise when companies are promising that the purchase of a self-swab rape kit will deter rapists. That is plainly offensive and shifts the onus on to women and off the cowards who rape them. The kits are also inadmissible in court. We have already had a sexual assault of a child case collapse because of the use of a self-swab kit. For almost a year, rape charities have begged the Government to take action and ban these dangerous kits and their dangerous narratives. Will the Government work with me, support my campaign and commit to protecting women from self-swab rape kits?
Sarah Jones
The Home Office shares the concerns expressed by law enforcement and healthcare professionals about the use of self-swabbing rape kits, and are considering this matter very carefully. We always recommend attendance at a sexual assault referral centre to collect samples, regardless of whether a person decides to report an incident to the police.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
Antisocial behaviour is a scourge that has gone untackled for too long. We are funding hotspot policing in our town centres and other areas in which antisocial behaviour is rife; that is having an impact. Our neighbourhood policing guarantee, which will mean 3,000 more police on our streets by next March, will have an impact. We are introducing respect orders, which will be a really useful tool to tackle prolific antisocial behaviour offenders. The message has to be loud and clear: we will not accept this behaviour, and the police are responding.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Sarah Jones
Yes. I was really pleased that charges for shop theft increased by 25% in the year to June 2025, because the police are taking these issues seriously: they are really getting in there, working with our retailers, getting the prolific offenders and tackling the issue. I am always very pleased to meet.
Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is right: 20% of offenders are responsible for 80% of crime. We need to ensure that repeat offenders are targeted, and that is what the police are doing. There is a raft of tools that we can use, but partnerships between the police and the retail sector are key. The number of shop theft charges has increased, but we need to look at other measures, such as treatment when people have drug addiction and other such issues. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
Sussex police is one of the most underfunded forces in England, with the number of officers per resident 27% below the national average. Following the national decrease in police officers during the first year of this Government, will the Home Secretary commit to ensuring that police officer numbers go up in 2026?
Sarah Jones
I will just repeat the statistic: 94% of the fall in officer headcount in 2024-25 came during the last four months of the previous Government. Total funding for 2026-27 is £18.3 billion, which is a £746 million increase on the previous year.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
For my constituents back home in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a crime is a crime wherever it takes place. Can the Minister set out what steps she will take to ensure that rural crime in my constituency and across Staffordshire is always treated with the same urgency as crime that takes place in our town and city centres?
Sarah Jones
We are supporting and working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on its new rural crime strategy, and we are working very closely with local police forces such as Thames Valley police, which has a rural crime team tackling these issues. Our neighbourhood policing guarantee applies everywhere, and all areas—rural or urban—must have the right number of people in their local community tackling crime.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
It is widely reported that the Home Secretary is a strong supporter of robust reform of the European Court of Human Rights. A large number of countries on the European continent share our concerns over that. Has she discussed them with any of her opposite numbers? In particular, where does she see the common interest in reforming the Court?
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
On 7 October the police told a private meeting that they planned to ban Israeli fans from Villa Park. That was, to quote the minutes,
“in the absence of intelligence”.
On 9 October they accepted that they needed to find a more clear rationale for the decision already made. On 16 October they said they suddenly found significant intelligence for a ban. That supposedly came from a conversation with the Dutch police on 1 October, before the first meeting held in the “absence of intelligence”. Does the Home Secretary believe West Midlands police—yes or no?
Sarah Jones
As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, we have asked His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services to look at that and we are waiting to see what it has to say. That is absolutely the right thing to do. Did we disagree with the decision? Yes, we did. Do we want to get to the bottom of what happened? Absolutely, we do.
Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)
In relation to the changes, announced at the end of last year, to indefinite leave to remain, my constituent Dr Matthew Hewitt advises on an issue relevant to his family and many other families across the country: that the information being put out by the Government is ambiguous as to whether or not the shorter five-year route will remain for those currently on partner visas, or whether the baseline changes to 10 years will apply to those currently on those partner visas. I would be grateful for some clarity on that, please.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
Happy new year, Mr Speaker.
Does the Minister agree that far too much resource is being spent on exceedingly heavy-handed policing of peaceful protests, which is likely to increase with plans to restrict protests based on their supposed cumulative impact, as planned in the Crime and Policing Bill?
Sarah Jones
No, I disagree with my hon. Friend on that. Policing protests is always a balance that we have to get right: we have to respect the right to protest, but we also have to ensure the police have the powers they need to tackle issues and ensure that protests can happen peacefully, as they have done for so many years in this country.
Provisional Police Funding Settlement 2026-27
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
Total funding for police forces, including Counter Terrorism Policing, will be up to £19.5 billion in 2026-27, an increase of up to £798 million compared to the 2025-26 police funding settlement. Total funding to territorial police forces will be up to £18.3 billion, an increase of up to £746 million compared to 2025-26. This equates to a 4.2% cash increase and a 2.0% real terms increase for police forces. For police and crime commissioners in England the council tax referendum threshold will be £15 for a band D property.
Funding for Counter Terrorism Policing will increase by at least £52 million to £1.2 billion in 2026- 27. Police and crime commissioners will be notified separately of force-level funding allocations for Counter Terrorism Policing, which will not be made public for security reasons.
We will publish a police reform White Paper in early 2026 which will set out a vision to bring policing into the modern age with the technology, innovation and structures they need to ensure policing can focus on the crimes that matter to the public and to drive out waste and inefficiency. As with previous years, a copy of the “Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2026-27” will be laid before the House by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in the new year.
An accompanying table that outlines policing bodies’ proposed total funding for 2026-27 can be viewed online: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2025-12-18/HCWS1216/
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