The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)
I beg to move,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2025-26 (HC 621), which was laid before this House on 30 January, be approved.
With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to express my condolences to the family and friends—and to the wider school community at All Saints Catholic high school—of Harvey Willgoose, who was the victim of a stabbing in Sheffield earlier this week and sadly died. I echo the comments made by the Prime Minister that schools must be places of safety and learning, not violence and fear.
It is a privilege to present to the House the final police funding settlement for 2025-26. This is the first opportunity that the Labour Government have had to set out our commitment to and support for funding the police of England and Wales. In year one of this Government, we are starting the hard work of rebuilding neighbourhood policing and giving the police the tools to do the job. In contrast, year one of the previous Tory Government, in 2010, saw the start of massive cuts to frontline policing that cut over 20,000 police officers, baked in the unfairness in funding that many now complain about, and weakened powers to deal with antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood crime, the consequences of which we now see around the country.
I will commence my remarks by expressing my heartfelt thanks to the thousands of dedicated officers and staff, up and down the country, for their unwavering commitment and bravery. In the months since I was appointed to this post, I have met many frontline officers from around the country—from Bedfordshire, Cleveland, the Met, West Midlands, Suffolk, Merseyside and Humberside. I have seen and heard about countless examples of outstanding police work.
In the summer, the police demonstrated exceptional bravery and compassion in the face of unimaginably distressing scenes in Southport. The following day, those same police officers faced the most disgraceful violent attacks from criminals and thugs, with 302 officers injured while working to keep the public safe. We are incredibly fortunate to have so many courageous men and women devoted to keeping us all safe and pursuing criminals without fear or favour. This Government will never take their service and sacrifice for granted. The police deserve our respect and support, and the investment we are making through the settlement underlines our commitment to working with the police to deliver the safer streets all our constituents deserve.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I join the Minister in thanking the hard-working police officers and police community support officers in Essex. Last week, the Conservative police, fire and crime commissioner threatened to get rid of all 99 Essex PCSOs, who do incredibly hard work supporting my community of Harlow. Does the Minister welcome the fact that the PFCC has U-turned on that, and will she recognise the £27 million in extra funding for Essex police?
Dame Diana Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue of Essex. I will come on to talk more about the funding that is going into all police forces, including Essex. I am delighted that the threats that were being made about the reduction in the number of PCSOs will not come to pass. All police forces will benefit from the settlement, as I will go on to talk about.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The right hon. Lady referred to neighbourhood policing. In Norfolk, the new settlement will mean four officers on duty at any one time over an area of 2,000 square miles. Norfolk’s chief constable, who is also the national lead, has warned that there is a £4 million funding gap for Norfolk, and that he will have to lose experienced police staff as a result. Why is the Minister not giving Norfolk and other rural areas the settlement they need?
Dame Diana Johnson
I will go on to talk about neighbourhood policing, but all police forces are getting additional money in the police settlement. On the neighbourhood policing money that is being made available, we are working with all police forces so that they come up with plans for how they can best deliver the neighbourhood policing guarantee in their area. I will talk about that in a moment.
Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Dame Diana Johnson
I just want to get my next point on to the record, and then I will certainly give way. In 2025-26, overall funding for policing will total up to £19.6 billion. Of that amount, the funding available to police and crime commissioners for their local police forces will be up to £17.5 billion. That is an increase of an additional £1.1 billion for next year, and a 6.6% cash increase. Just so we are all clear, that is £1.1 billion in addition.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dame Diana Johnson
I am happy to give way to the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden).
Sir Oliver Dowden
Can the Minister, for the benefit of the House, clarify how much of that uplift will be taken up by the increased national insurance contributions that have to be made by police forces as a result of Labour’s policy?
Dame Diana Johnson
The national insurance increases that were announced in the Budget are fully funded in the settlement.
I think I saw the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) rise.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Minister talks of increasing the draft settlement—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question!”]
Dame Diana Johnson
If hon. Members want the exact figure given to police forces to cover national insurance contributions, it is £230 million.
I will now give way to the right hon. Lady.
Liz Saville Roberts
The Minister talks of increasing the draft settlement, but extra funding for Welsh police forces only plugs the gaps left by the Labour Welsh Government reducing police community support officer funding in recent years. Plaid Cymru PCC Dafydd Llywelyn tells us that 56% of Dyfed-Powys police funding now has to come from local residents. Surely the time has come to review police funding in Wales and have devolution of policing on the table.
Dame Diana Johnson
Issues such as the precept in Wales are obviously a matter for the Welsh Government. There is general agreement that a number of Members are concerned about the police settlement. It is historical; it is what we inherited from the previous Government. I know that the previous Government had two attempts to reform the formula and did not do so. I will come on to talk about that in a moment. However, I just want to go through some of the figures so we are all clear about what is being announced today.
I have just set out the £1.1 billion extra being made available to policing in the next financial year. That funding is based on the assumption that PCCs make use of the full precept flexibility of £14 for English forces—I know that is different in Wales. That measure provides important flexibility that could result in an additional £329.8 million in funding should all forces choose to fully utilise it. It is important to make clear, however, that those decisions are ultimately made at the local level.
I will now come on to the neighbourhood policing commitment. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of our policing model. Every community deserves visible, proactive and accessible neighbourhood policing, with officers tackling the issues that matter most to those areas. Under previous Conservative Governments, neighbourhood policing was slashed in communities across the country and more than half of the public now say they never see a bobby on the beat. Shockingly, that number has doubled since 2010, eroding community confidence and leaving people feeling less safe. Sadly, over the 14 years of those Governments, as I have said, neighbourhood policing was decimated, with the number of PCSOs halved and the number of special constables reduced by two thirds. That has dire consequences for public safety and public confidence.
Over the 14 years of the Conservative Governments, too many town centres and high streets across the country were gripped by an epidemic of antisocial behaviour. We are at the highest levels of shop theft for a generation, and that is corroding our communities and cannot be allowed to continue.
Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)
Retail crime is one of the biggest issues that businesses across Clwyd East raise with me. It is fair to say that the way in which the last Conservative Government characterised and deprioritised dealing with so-called low-value theft is the reason why we are in such a mess and there has been such a rise in shoplifting, which is now at a 20-year high. Will the Minister share my thanks to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the Co-operative party for what they have done in that area? Will she also tell us a little more about how the extra funding will help bolster our neighbourhood policing teams so that they can do the real tireless work to make sure both our shops and shopworkers are kept safe?
Dame Diana Johnson
My hon. Friend raises an important matter. That neighbourhood policing presence that we are talking about in our high streets and our town centres will be so important in getting to grips not only with antisocial behaviour, but with the rise in shop theft and assaults on retail workers.
This Labour Government want to turn the page and put neighbourhood policing back into our communities, in every corner of the country. Our neighbourhood policing guarantee will see the recruitment of thousands of additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables, who will be equipped with the tougher powers they need to crack down on the crimes blighting our high streets and town centres. That is why we are doubling the funding for neighbourhood policing compared with the provisional settlement that was published in December, to a total of £200 million, to kick-start the work on neighbourhood policing in 2025-26. The impact of good neighbourhood policing on local community confidence and crime prevention can never be overstated. That is why it is integral to our safer streets mission, which is in turn a core strand of the Government’s plan for change.
I expect policing to make use of this funding to increase neighbourhood teams across every force next year. That increase in neighbourhood policing, alongside the neighbourhood policing guarantee, will strengthen the connections between the police and the communities that they serve, and clearly demonstrate to the public that the police are responding to local concerns and priorities.
I turn to the subject of police officer numbers. We are committing £376.8 million to support forces in maintaining officer numbers for 2025-26. Of this, £270.1 million will be allocated to forces on the condition that they meet their officer targets. An additional £106.7 million will be provided as a top-up grant to support recruitment efforts in 2024-25 and 2025-26. This funding will be unconditional and distributed based on the extra recruitment that each force achieves.
This settlement represents a significant increase in funding for police forces, but in return the Government will expect all police forces to raise their ambition on efficiencies, drive forward improvements to productivity and ensure that every penny invested in our mission to create safer streets counts. That means that forces will be required to participate in the recently launched commercial efficiencies and collaboration programme to unlock immediate cashable savings and develop additional opportunities for increased income generation. Our first focus will be on forces signing up to national approaches to buying energy, vehicles, fuel, temporary staff and software licences.
We are also increasing firearms licensing fees that have not changed since 2015 and are now significantly less than the cost of the service provided by police forces. The additional revenue raised will be retained by police forces to support the important improvements that are needed in firearms licensing.
Those are our initial priority areas, but we will be going further, ensuring that the foundations are in place to deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of efficiency savings by the end of this Parliament. We will also reduce burdens, tackle bureaucracy and free up resources within policing, whether that is through better utilisation of AI to rapidly triage and disseminate thousands of digital forensics records and eliminate any wasteful and unnecessary redaction of files passing between the police and the CPS, or supporting the roll-out of enhanced and rapid video responses to improve response times and victim outcomes. Improved productivity has the potential to unlock millions of hours within policing, free up vital officer time for redeployment on to the frontline, unlock further savings for police forces and improve outcomes. We will ensure that we provide support to forces to measure the benefits of these improvements and ensure that time saved is reinvested into our priority areas, such as the delivery of the neighbourhood policing guarantee.
I wish to say a few words about counter-terrorism. The preservation of our national security is the first duty of any Government. This settlement provides essential support for counter-terrorism policing, the funding for which will increase by 14% to £1.1 billion to ensure that it has the resources that it needs to deal with the threats that we face.
Despite a very challenging fiscal inheritance—a black hole of £22 billion—we have prioritised investment in the police because we recognise that people cannot thrive unless they feel safe, and that our country cannot realise its potential unless the foundations are strong. No doubt there is much more to do. I have heard the feedback, and I know that some police forces are facing tough decisions to balance budgets. I will continue to work in partnership with the police in our quest to restore neighbourhood policing and deliver safer streets. I think this is a shared mission to improve the lives of the people we all serve; to reduce harm and restore confidence; to equip and empower our police for the challenges of today and tomorrow; and to build a fairer and safer country for all. The settlement that we are debating will aid us in those endeavours, which is why I commend it to the House.
Matt Vickers
No, I am going to make some progress, thank you very much.
Some might say that the Minister is giving with one hand and taking with the other. However, given the tax rises, it is clear that she is giving with the left hand and taking back with the far-left hand—[Interruption.] Does the Minister want to intervene?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
I wonder whether the shadow Minister knows what pays for policing. The money comes from the Treasury, and when there is nothing left—for example, because the Home Office in which the shadow Home Secretary was a Minister did not put any money towards many of the schemes set out in their Budget—where does he think the money has to come from?
Matt Vickers
Taxpayers—the people who go out day and night, work hard and cough up for the national insurance rise. It is those small businesses battered by the Government’s slashing of rates relief on leisure, hospitality and retail businesses—absolutely horrendous. Those hard-working men and women out there paying their taxes fund these police officers.
The second big issue with the funding formula is that previous Conservative Governments provided in-year funding for PCCs to cover the police pay award, which was then added to the baseline, so any increase was on top of that already elevated baseline. By contrast, the in-year adjustment for this year’s pay settlement was not added to the baseline, so about £200 million of this apparently generous increase simply makes up for that omission. Around £430 million of that apparently generous increase actually makes up for the Government’s own choices. Adjusting for that, the increase in funding for policing next year is not £1.9 billion at all, but more like £660 million—nearly £300 million less than the last increase under the previous Government. That actual increase of £660 million is not enough to meet pay and inflationary pressures.
Freedom of information requests from police forces highlight the financial strain, with some forces not receiving the full amount required from the Home Office. That shortfall must then be covered, either by local taxpayers or through cuts elsewhere. I would be interested to hear the Minister for Policing’s view on this, given that her party was a strong proponent of freezing council tax in 2023—a principle that, like so many others, seems to have been abandoned now that Labour is in government. All that means is that police budgets are overstretched and the forces will inevitably have to make tough decisions.
Although estimates vary, the National Police Chiefs’ Council projected in December a £1.3 billion funding gap over the next two years, which the council’s finance lead said would inevitably result in job losses. Other estimates suggest that the funding shortfall is closer to £118 million per year, even when accounting for the additional funding announced last week.
Regardless of which estimate we use, either should be of serious concern to the Home Office and the Government. Given current staffing costs, the lower figure of £118 million could mean job losses for over 1,800 officers, which is unacceptable. Yes, a Labour Government who are borrowing like no one is watching and spending like there is no tomorrow could still leave us with 1,800 fewer officers on our streets.
Matt Vickers
The hon. Gentleman will have plenty of opportunities to contribute.
I know that Labour Members do not like this fact, but the Conservatives left office with record numbers of police and thousands more officers on our streets than ever before. All we are doing is calling on the Government to try at the very least to maintain that number, not reduce it. In reality, the Government are placing police forces in an impossible position. How do they expect forces to meet their financial obligations without cutting officer numbers?
The Government will point to their intention to recruit new neighbourhood officers, but we all know that includes only a relatively small number of new officers—just 3,000. Most of the claimed 13,000 officers are either being reassigned, are part time, are volunteers or are PCSOs with no power of arrest. Given the existing budget shortfalls, I am concerned that that level of recruitment will not be enough. The £200 million allocated in that inadequate settlement appears insufficient to meet the Government’s stated objectives.
Matt Vickers
Will the Minister be honest and acknowledge that in order to achieve what has been outlined, officers will need to be reassigned? If so, will she assure us that those officers will be assigned appropriately? Can she assure MPs—
Matt Vickers
I am sure that the Minister will have opportunities to come back to me. Can she assure MPs that when their constituents ring 999, they will not have to wait long for an emergency response, because response officers have been redeployed to neighbourhoods?
Dame Diana Johnson
I just thought it might be helpful if I gave the shadow Minister a reminder. He is right that there were 149,769 police officers in March 2024, but in June—when the Conservative Government were still in power—that figure had been reduced by 1,232 to 148,536 officers. The numbers went down on the previous Government’s watch.
Matt Vickers
By the measurements in September, that is not the case. By the time September came—[Interruption.] Is the Minister going to give us the guarantee that the numbers will not go down any further as a result of the funding?
The Government have undeniably set well-intentioned goals. Halving knife crime and tackling violence against women and girls are ambitions that will be celebrated across Parliament and across the country, but what are the actual measures for halving violence against women and girls? Without enough police officers available to prioritise those issues, progress will be far more difficult.
Moving forward, will the Government commit to fully funding pay increases and ensuring that additional tax burdens are not placed on police forces in the years ahead? What has been put forward today does not do enough to provide the resources that the police need to tackle criminals in our society, meaning that the only winners will be those who thrive on criminality.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
First, I express my gratitude to all Members who have contributed to the debate. Before I respond to their points—and I will respond—I take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the police officers, staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. The contribution they make to our society is simply extraordinary, and we are fortunate to have them. I shamelessly take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Orla Jenkins and Jim Carroll, my sergeant and inspector, who almost live in my office—which is not a particularly good thing. They are absolutely amazing, responsive and well-known neighbourhood coppers. It is so important that people know the names of their neighbourhood officers and can contact them.
I do not plan to repeat the top headlines of the settlements that we are debating, as they were covered at length by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, but I reiterate that the settlement represents a significant investment in policing that will kick-start the delivery of the safer streets mission. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of British policing. That is why we have injected an additional £100 million into neighbourhood policing compared with the provisional settlement, which means that we are doubling the funding available to forces to a total of £200 million so that they can carry on the fight against crime and keep communities safe.
Let me turn to some of the points raised during the debate. I welcome the comments from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). It seems that he lives in wonderland. He has talked today as if we have come from some amazing nirvana with regard to policing, not from a situation where every single part of our system—whether it is our courts, our police, our mental health services or our housing—has been so utterly degraded that all of that work landed on the hard-working police forces that he sought to praise.
Matt Vickers
I was just wondering whether the Minister knew how much this national insurance tax raid was going to cost her local police force and those hard-working police officers in her part of the world.
Jess Phillips
I am not exactly sure how much it will cost West Midlands police, but what I do know is that the Home Office is going to give it to them. The shadow Minister has talked as if taxes do not pay for our public services—that is an absolute madness; money has to be raised to pay for our public services. The Home Office is funding the national insurance rise for West Midlands police and every other—[Interruption.] I cannot believe that it is being argued that our police forces were not completely and utterly decimated, and there seems to have been a tiny bit of whitewashing from some Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the role that their party also played in taking 20,000 police officers off our streets.
The shadow Minister specifically questioned the Policing Minister on 999 calls and response officers, and on how we will halve violence against women and girls with the help of this settlement. I want to bring him back from wonderland into the real world and tell him a story about Raneem Oudeh, who called 999 13 times on the night she was murdered by her husband. She called out to West Midlands police 13 times, and there was no immediate response—the immediate response that I am being told has always existed, along with, “Oh, something is going to change.”
Oh my gosh—I do not know what system the shadow Minister thinks has existed for the past 14 years, but I will tell him what we are going to do. We are going to put specialist domestic abuse workers in every single one of our police force response rooms, because of the failures of response under police forces decimated by the years of Conservative Governments. Frankly, I am flabbergasted by the shadow Minister’s gall. My husband often says, “I don’t know why you continue to be surprised.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins) raised the issue of the funding formula, as have many other Members in the Chamber today. I know that the Policing Minister has visited Bedfordshire and very much heard the particular challenges they face.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) talked about the mental health and morale of police. I went out to Hertfordshire police recently to see some police officers who were dog handlers; the dogs were there to sniff out the hard drives of sex offenders and child sex abusers. One of the officers had this amazing dog, Micky, and I noticed that it was the first time I had seen a police officer look genuinely happy for quite a long time. Morale in policing and the health of our police officers have been dreadfully tested over recent years, and I noted how chuffed this bloke was to be doing his job with this dog—the dog was lovely. We need to make sure we are looking after our police officers, and the Policing Minister informs me that as part of our reform programme, we are having a very close look at how occupational health is handed out to police officers.
The hon. Members for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) all raised the issue of the Met. The Met is large and complex, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) mentioned—as did many others—the issue of police officers being taken away from the frontlines in their neighbourhoods in order to undertake not just policing of the capital, but sometimes national policing in other areas. I reassure Members that the funding formula for neighbourhood policing means that it has to be spent on neighbourhood policing and cannot really be pulled away to other areas.
Matt Vickers
Does the Minister think that reducing the number of people working in response policing to make up the numbers in neighbourhood policing will improve or reduce response times?
Jess Phillips
What I think is that we have put £1.1 billion extra into policing, and what I expect to happen across police forces is that we will work with them. As we have seen today from Members in Essex—[Interruption.] Would the shadow Minister like to intervene? What are you shaking your head about, sir?
Matt Vickers
As we have heard, once you take out your national insurance tax raid and the pay rise that you took from the base, it is more like £660 million, which is £300 million less than last year’s settlement from the Conservative Government.
Jess Phillips
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker—they are definitely not your Benches. I heard groaning earlier about the black hole that was left. The shadow Minister makes a point about the uplift in pay, but in this year’s settlement nothing had been put in that budget by his Government to increase the pay of police officers. Nothing was put into the budget, because that was the way that they operated.
Jess Phillips
It isn’t utter rubbish—it’s a fact. Anyway, I shall go back to the people who are engaging with the debate. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) that I send a massive thanks to Chris Duffy, who sounds like an amazing officer. I imagine that he is happy in his work because he works with a dog. Maybe giving every police officer a dog is the answer—that is not Government policy, and neither is clipping people round the ear, however much we might want to.
I say to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) —I will repeatedly say this—that I am from the West Midlands police force, and there has not been a year since I was elected to Parliament when the problems with the funding formula have not been raised with me. The west midlands is one of the areas that the issue affects deeply, so I massively hear that point. Two attempts that the previous Government made to look at the funding formula were abandoned, so we felt very much that this year we had to create a stable system. I remind hon. Members that this is our seventh month in government, but we absolutely hear the arguments about the funding formula, which was not reformed in the last 14 years. We have inherited this.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
May I press the Minister on the specific point about the west midlands? She is talking about funding in the west midlands and I am also a west midlands MP. How does she think that the whopping bill that the west midlands force will face from employer national insurance contributions will impact on its budget? When it comes to money, if she is so passionate about neighbourhood policing, as indeed am I, what assurances can she give that funding from the abhorrent sale of Aldridge police station will come back into services for residents of Aldridge-Brownhills?
Jess Phillips
The first thing I would say is that it will cost West Midlands police nothing because the Home Office is going to fund it. Apart from the amazing world we have apparently lived in with policing for the past 14 years, Aldridge police station was shut down under the budgets that the right hon. Lady’s Government gave to local areas. I am led to believe today that those were like milk and honey.
Jess Phillips
I imagine the point that the right hon. Lady is going to make is that we have a Labour police and crime commissioner, but they can only work with what they are given. I was not going to give way to her, but go on.
Wendy Morton
I think that the hon. Lady is agreeing with me that the closure of Aldridge police station has come on the watch of the Labour police and crime commissioner, who delayed and delayed making that decision for years.
Jess Phillips
I do not disagree that that is how the budgets are given out, but the number of police stations that were closed under the last 14 years of Tory Governments is phenomenal. I believe that a Member mentioned earlier the ones closed by Boris Johnson when he was the Mayor of London. Maybe the right hon. Lady would have heard me already talking about the west midlands, had she been in the debate. I note that a previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), is coming into the Chamber, but for most of the time there have been no Conservative Members in here for any of this debate.
Will my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East please pass on my massive respect to Coggy? The Policing Minister wanted me to confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) that she met Unison last week, and she is absolutely happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the terrible and tragic losses of life in her constituency and in the wider area of Essex.
We are all looking forward to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan) reopening the Chichester custody suite, which he has now become responsible for. Many Members, including him and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), have talked with great passion about the importance of neighbourhood policing and the problems of antisocial behaviour in our areas. We face few things more often as Members of Parliament than complaints about failures on antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhoods. I will not do what the previous Government did, and pretend that everything is world-beating and the best it could ever be and that nothing will ever be better than anything that they could ever do. I am not going to do that.
Jess Phillips
The hon. Member says from a sedentary position that that is rubbish, but the Conservatives literally used to claim things were world-beating all the time.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Will the Minister give way?
Jess Phillips
Conservative interventions have not been that world-beating, so no, I will not. Things are not perfect. We all think that there should be more police officers. We all want greater resource on every single street. Every single constituency MP who spoke, spoke up with passion because they want their neighbourhoods to feel safer.
Jessica Toale
I thank the Minister for her explanation of the funding formula, which is something I have raised with the Policing Minister, too. Seasonality is an issue in my constituency of Bournemouth West. I put on record my thanks to Dorset police for doing so much with the little that they do have, including on things like antisocial behaviour, which blights our town. I invite the Minister to come and see some of the remarkable work that the police are doing with businesses and the council to tackle some of these challenges.
Jess Phillips
I would absolutely love to come to Dorset. What my hon. Friend says is right. I think somebody mentioned the idea of a double bed with a single duvet moving round it, and although huge efficiencies could still be made across forces, some of our police forces do amazing things. I absolutely praise Dorset police for that work.
Steve Barclay
I am trying to make a constructive point about the Minister’s remarks on efficiencies. She said that there are huge opportunities for efficiencies to be made. Much of the debate has been on funding, but she is signalling that things can be done better. What is opaque to me, not least from the conversation that I had with my own police and crime commissioner before coming here, is what productivity targets the Government have set and what variation they expect to close across the 43 police forces. How many police hours does she expect to be freed up from working more efficiently on productivity gains? Or are the Government’s actions adding bureaucracy and red tape and making it harder for police forces to deliver?
Jess Phillips
I do not know yet how many hours. I went out to Thames Valley police and saw exactly how many officer hours were saved by the police having direct video contact. A statement was taken from a victim of domestic abuse in eight minutes, rather than police officers having to go out to their house three days later. That will be rolled out to every police force and will lead to huge time efficiencies in statement-taking. As someone who has given a huge number of police statements—every month—I know how inefficient it is. I would be lying if I stood here and said, “It will be 16,000 hours for each police force.” We will look at exactly what works and how we can make those efficiencies.
Jess Phillips
It is a bit galling when people who have not sat through the debate come in and want to speak. There was no one on the Conservative Benches for the vast majority of the debate. Members who have taken part in the debate deserve a bit more respect.
This Government back the police 100%. We are grateful for the tireless work that police officers, PCSOs and staff do every single day. We have heard today about some of the crimes that they suffer. This investment is a significant step towards meeting our shared ambition to boost neighbourhood policing and to restore confidence in the police that has been so badly lost, as was mentioned by many Members. This Government have prioritised investment in policing in a time of fiscal constraint, but we know that there is more to do. We will work in partnership with the police to deliver our shared ambition to boost visible neighbourhood policing, tackle knife crime and violence against women and girls and reform the police, and to deliver efficiencies to make their jobs easier. This Government will always give the police the resources, powers, tools and support that they need to get the job done.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2025–26 (HC 621), which was laid before this House on 30 January, be approved.
Gareth Snell
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In today’s Prime Minister’s questions, the Leader of the Opposition alleged that a donor to my party was funding a court case challenging the consent to develop the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields. That is entirely untrue. She went on to suggest that the Government’s decision to accept the court ruling was swayed somehow by a previous relationship with Dr Rausing. This is a very serious allegation for which no evidence has been provided. I seek your advice and guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the recourse available to me and other Members to ask the Leader of the Opposition to come back to this House and present the evidence, and if she cannot, to apologise, withdraw the comment and correct the record.