(3 days, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
Gareth Snell
I just wanted to say this before the right hon. Gentleman got into his speech. In 2010 the number of police officers in Staffordshire was about 1,000, and it only returned to that level this year. We have never had a police and crime commissioner who was not a Conservative, and we have only ever had a Conservative council and a Conservative Government during that period. Is the right hon. Gentleman able to tell me whom I should hold accountable for that decimation of neighbourhood policing under the last Government?
Chris Philp
The last Government left office with record police numbers. In March 2024, at the time of the last recruitment intake, there were 149,769 officers by headcount, the highest number in history and 3,000 higher than the number in 2010. The Minister asked about outcomes. According to the crime survey for England and Wales, overall crime fell by about 50% under the last Government.
I was about to say, before I, perhaps foolishly—
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Philp
Goodness me, this is already becoming very congested, but I cannot possibly resist my right hon. Friend’s entreaty.
Graham Stuart
I am extremely grateful. My right hon. Friend is being most generous, and he has barely begun his speech.
I must have misheard, because I have listened to so many speeches about law and order from Labour Members, and my right hon. Friend must have misspoken. He has suggested that not only did the last Conservative Government leave a record number of police officers, but overall crime fell by 50%. Have those words ever been issued by the Ministers, or do they try to mislead the public at every opportunity?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Does the right hon. Gentleman want to stand up and correct the record? Go ahead.
Graham Stuart
I mentioned no individual, Madam Deputy Speaker, but “inadvertently”, of course, in any Minister’s case.
Chris Philp
It is true that Labour Members forget to mention the record police numbers in March 2024 or the reduction in crime—which was, in fact, more than 50% over the period.
Chris Philp
I will happily give way quite a lot, but I have not even started, and I have given way a couple of times already.
I was going to start by echoing the Minister’s tribute to police officers up and down the country who, every day, put themselves in the line of danger. I have attended the annual police memorial service and met the families of officers who have tragically lost their lives while keeping us safe, and I think they should remain at the front of our minds during the debate.
The Minister threw around some big numbers earlier in respect of the increase in police funding that has been announced, but the 4.5% increase for frontline police forces—the increase being given to police and crime commissioners—is not enough to meet the funding and cost pressures that they face. Earlier today I spoke to Roger Hirst, the Essex police and crime commissioner, who is, as the Minister knows, the finance lead for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. He told me that, according to his assessment, this funding settlement is about £100 million short of the cost pressures that police forces will face, which means that they will have to find cuts—but it is not just Roger. The National Police Chiefs’ Council, the body that represents chief constables, said on 28 January:
“Many forces are planning service reductions, with consequences for officer numbers, staff capacity and…resilience.”
In other words, both police and crime commissioners and the NPCC say that the settlement is inadequate to maintain police resources. But it not just them either. The Labour police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset has just had to cancel the recruitment of 70 new officers because of “lower than expected” Government funding. The Cambridgeshire police and crime commissioner says that the settlement falls short of what is required. The chief constable of Cleveland says that his force faces a £4 million funding gap. The Essex police and crime commissioner, whom I mentioned a moment ago, says that
“the Government…settlement…is insufficient to cover rising costs”,
and Greater Manchester police say that they face a £32 million funding gap. In summary, this settlement is not enough to enable police forces up and down the country to maintain their level of service. They will shrink, and their services will be diminished.
The Minister mentioned the money being provided for the 1,750 neighbourhood policing officers, but did not say how much it was. In fact, the Government are providing £50 million for that purpose. If we divide the one number by the other, we find that it comes to £29,000 per officer. As the NPCC has pointed out, the cost of an officer is, on average, £68,000, so the Government are funding only 42% of the cost, leaving the other 58% completely unfunded. The Minister also forgot to mention that the Government are cancelling the funding for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrolling, which was introduced by the last Government and should have been continued.
As for the way in which the money is distributed, it remains the case that the funding formula is deeply unfair. Changes are long overdue, and I ask the Minister to introduce those changes to make the formula fairer. The Metropolitan police receive by far the highest amount in the country. Even if we account for the national capital city grant and counter-terrorism funding, they receive £439 per head. As for the lowest-funded forces, Dorset receives £255 a head, Essex £236, Cambridgeshire £237 and Wiltshire £235. They are inadequately funded, and the formula urgently needs to be updated. I ask the Minister—or her colleague the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), when she sums up the debate—to address that point.
The consequence of this inadequate funding settlement is just the same as the consequence of last year’s inadequate funding settlement, when my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), my shadow ministerial colleague, stood at the Dispatch Box and warned the Minister’s predecessor that the settlement would lead to reductions in police numbers. We now know that that has come to pass. The most recent figures, published only a few weeks ago, show that in the year to September 2025—an entire year in which Labour was in government—the number of police officers fell by 1,318. Numbers are being cut under this Labour Government.
The Government say that they want to hire staff instead, to do jobs behind desks, but the number of police staff fell as well, by 529. They talk about police community support officers. Well, the number of PCSOs fell by 204. Special constables are down by 514 and police volunteers are down by 429. That is a reduction of 3,000 in the police workforce in just one year under this Labour Government. They are not funding the police properly, and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Mark Pritchard
It is true that a huge number of police staff are never seen—support staff, admin staff and call centre staff, for instance—and they play an important part in delivering police services to all our communities, but is it not the case that visibility in policing is needed, and only police officers who are warranted can make arrests when crime is committed? Notwithstanding all the wonderful people working in the back offices of all our police forces, we still need police officers in our communities, tackling the antisocial behaviour that my right hon. Friend mentioned and turning up at least occasionally at the parish council, where the local police officer still has a reference in the agenda. Visibility is critical to deal with the fear of crime, and a police officer with a warrant is critical in enforcing the law and making arrests.
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?
Chris Philp
The point is that the Minister has cut other areas to do that. She has cut 999 responses and crime investigations. She can use smoke and mirrors by focusing on only one part of the police world, but the fact is that total police numbers are down, police staff are down, PCSOs are down, specials are down and police volunteers are down—all under this Labour Government.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for lobbying on behalf of Essex. Obviously, I want more funding for Essex as much as he does. I should declare an interest at this point, as I have stood against Roger Hirst in two elections, but I want to make it clear that I have a great deal of time for the work that he does as police and crime commissioner. On his website, he says that he welcomes
“another 69 new recruits into Essex Police, making the force bigger and stronger than ever before.”
That does not quite fit with what the shadow Secretary of State said earlier.
Chris Philp
Roger Hirst, in common with many police and crime commissioners, has done a valiant job in the face of inadequate funding. However, as he said himself:
“The Government settlement is insufficient to cover rising costs.”
Let us look at outcomes, which the Minister mentioned. It is a matter of deep concern that, under this Labour Government, shoplifting has gone up by 10%, to record levels, robbery from business premises is up by 66% in the past year, antisocial behaviour has gone up, rape has gone up by 7%, and sexual offences have gone up by 8%.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
When the right hon. Gentleman says that rape has gone up, does he mean that the recorded crime of rape has gone up? Does he recognise that all Members of this House should celebrate when women feel more comfortable in coming forward?
Chris Philp
That is not what the hon. Lady was saying when the rape figures were going up under the last Government.
Chris Philp
Once is enough.
Reported rapes are going up, which reflects increased levels of offending. That is a serious concern.
Jess Phillips
What is actually going up is rape charging. To put the record straight, I never criticised increased reporting of rape. What I criticised was the decimation of rape charging under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, which led to the worst record in history.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady will know that the change in the rape charge rate followed the disclosure rule changes after the Liam Allan case back in 2017. The last Government set up Operation Soteria and a rape taskforce, which were designed to increase rape charging rates. Indeed, they were increasing prior to the last election, and I very much hope that this Government are continuing the work of Operation Soteria, which was started by the last Government.
On the police reforms that the Minister referred to, some functions, such as counter-terrorism and fighting serious and organised crime, may well be better provided on a national basis. However, we oppose the creation of approximately 10 regional mega-forces, which will see county forces essentially abolished and merged into enormous entities that are far removed from the communities they serve. That will inevitably see resources drawn away from towns and villages and given to large cities, and there is no evidence that large forces are either more efficient or better performing.
In fact, the two arguably worst-performing forces in the country, the Met and West Midlands, are also the largest forces in the country. The history of Police Scotland, which was created by merging eight police forces into one, has not been a particularly happy episode, and it is certainly not a good case study for what is being proposed. I ask the Minister to think again about the creation of mega-forces, given that the examples of the West Midlands, the Met and Police Scotland indicate that large police forces do not perform well.
There is one area where I agree with the Minister, and where I actively support what she is trying to do: the use of technology in catching criminals, and in particular the use of live facial recognition. She and I have both seen that being used very effectively in Croydon town centre, and indeed across London, where 963 arrests have occurred in the past year as a result of using live facial recognition of criminals who would not otherwise have been caught, including a man wanted for a double rape dating back eight years. He would not have been caught, but for the use of live facial recognition. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s plans for rolling out this technology across the country and accelerating its use dramatically.
I would like an assurance that the Minister’s consultation on the use of the technology will be carefully calibrated, because there is a risk that people on the fringes—left and right—who do not like it will lobby her and try to persuade her to introduce all kinds of rules, regulations and red tape. If she gives in to their requests, she may end up inadvertently creating a bureaucratic system that, in practice, is very difficult for the police to operate. I urge her to think about the mainstream majority, who strongly support this technology. In Croydon, the public certainly support the technology, because they understand that it catches criminals and that if someone is not on the watch list, their image is immediately and automatically deleted. I ask the Minister to make sure that if she does change the rules, she does so in a way that is quite light-touch, and that it does not end up strangling what could be one of the most promising and effective crime-fighting technologies that this country has seen for many decades. I really hope that is the approach she plans to take.
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend will have noted, as I did, that the Minister failed to answer on the “how”. She said that she wishes to ensure that the creation of massive new police organisations does not lead to policing becoming more distant, remote and hard to influence, not least for rural communities, but she could not tell us how it will be done. Does he share my concern that we will end up with a larger, more bureaucratic system that is remote from ordinary people? People in rural East Yorkshire are going to feel far away from decision making.
Chris Philp
My right hon. Friend puts it brilliantly. He has articulated exactly why the forced creation of regional mega-forces is likely to be a backwards step.
Chris Philp
I am almost done. The hon. Gentleman may find that a matter of considerable relief.
In conclusion—sometimes “in conclusion” are the most popular words I utter in a speech—
Esther McVey
At a time of great pressure on police budgets, my Cheshire police force is having to make redundancies. Was my right hon. Friend as concerned as I was that the Minister felt that our Labour police and crime commissioner could spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on vanity projects? She accepted it, rather than condemning it, and that money should go to frontline policing.
Chris Philp
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it was disappointing that the Minister did not substantively respond. Spending money on loads of communications officers, instead of police officers to catch criminals, is a misallocation of resources, and my right hon. Friend is right to call it out.
This police funding settlement is not adequate to meet the funding pressures. It will lead to continued reductions in police numbers across England and Wales, which will leave our constituents and our countries less safe.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her remarks. She will find very considerable support for the broad thrust of what she said, especially on streamlining and the new policing models. I know that she is thinking very seriously about how to get the best return on the reorganisation in order to tackle serious and organised crime, and she is alive to the regional specialisms and expertise that already exist. I thank her for that, and for her commitment to delivering better funding for our police force following the disastrous period of austerity under the Conservatives.
I want to put some challenges to the Minister, because I have some local concerns. However, after hearing the shadow Secretary of State’s remarks about police numbers, I have to say, in all candour, that the reduction of 20,000 police officers in the name of austerity was one of the most reckless and stupid things a Government could ever do. I would like him to come to the Dispatch Box and apologise for that gross dereliction of duty. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) chunters and laughs from a sedentary position.
Andy McDonald
I will in a minute.
Perhaps the shadow Secretary of State would like to apologise to the country for the damage that was caused. I can tell him that removing so many officers at a stroke had a devastating impact. Looking at the raw numbers—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member chunters, but he fails to comprehend.
Chris Philp
The hon. Member is focusing on the events of 14 years ago, when that Government were fixing the financial mess that Gordon Brown had left behind. I would remind him that the last Government left office with record police numbers, and I suggest he reserves his ire for the falling police numbers we are seeing under this Labour Government.
Andy McDonald
The penny has not dropped for the shadow Secretary of State, who cannot for one minute understand how that translated in our communities. That is the issue, because he simply does not take into consideration that loss of expertise. We cannot replace those police with recruits overnight. It was the stupidest thing a Government could do.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes my point for me, which is that the devastating thing was ripping the experience out of our police force and then dressing up new recruits as somehow a replacement. That led to higher crime in my constituency and, I know, in his.
Andy McDonald
My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. Those were the lived experiences of our constituents, and those were the consequences they had to live with. Opposition Members may say that was because of the financial situation they were left with, but austerity was of course a political choice. The Conservatives deliberately ploughed this furrow with disastrous consequences, and they should have the humility to get up and acknowledge the error they made.
Graham Stuart
I have never heard someone so passionately misinformed in my life. The Labour Government left a massive, gaping overspend. In other speeches the hon. Gentleman has mentioned the national debt going up under the Conservatives, but we brought it down every year, and we fought and reduced crime as well. Having ensured that the country recovered, we left record levels of police officers and a 50% cut in crime. He puts on this faux outrage, but the lived reality for his communities and mine was an improved service and balanced books.
Andy McDonald
The right hon. Gentleman should not consider it to be faux outrage. I lived in my constituency throughout that period and saw the damage it caused.
Andy McDonald
Yes, and we should acknowledge the damage that was caused. I am going to be challenging my own Government, and I am trying to be objective about these issues, but what has to be understood in this place is the consequences of the terrible decisions that were made.
I will now move on, because I want to ask the Minister to address the real issues involving Cleveland police. There is more to be done in improving funding, which remains uneven, and some local areas continue to miss out. I hope to explore this in an objective and rational way with those on the Front Bench.
I want to draw attention to the urgent and growing concerns of Cleveland’s police and crime commissioner about the funding of our local force. Despite serving one of the most deprived and high crime areas in the country, Cleveland police remains the force with the lowest number of officers compared with 2010—a reduction of some 12%—leaving the community more vulnerable and officers overstretched. With the greatest respect, the recent funding settlement compounds the problem. Cleveland received the smallest increase in the country—just 3.3%—and after accounting for inflation and pay awards, that leaves a real-terms shortfall of about £2.4 million, which is equivalent to 40 officers. The Government continue to expect this deficit to be met through local council tax, and I just respectfully suggest that is unreasonable.
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman was practically spitting with anger when he talked about the Conservatives’ record of increased numbers of police officers and a halving of crime, but now he “respectfully” makes suggestions to the Minister. Is it his understanding that, as a direct result of the settlement that this Minister has brought to the House, there will be a cut in service level in his deprived communities, making them less safe? Is that his understanding, and if so, perhaps his passion could rise up a little?
Andy McDonald
The difference between me and the right hon. Gentleman is that I am capable of being objective when facts are put in front of me, whereas he appears to be completely myopic and in total denial about his own Government’s record of decimating our police forces and the consequences of that. I am perfectly content with making proper representations to the Government on the settlements that have been devolved. That is a perfectly reasonable proposition, and it is a shame that he could not participate in a more sensible discussion.
With almost a third of our neighbourhoods in the top 10% of the most deprived nationally, local residents cannot shoulder a £90 increase on band D properties to restore staffing to safe levels. The police and crime commissioner has written three times to the Minister seeking urgent clarity about how the settlement was calculated. Each time, he has not had a response, and I ask the Minister to reflect on that and come back to me. Our communities and their elected PCC deserve answers. It is not just a matter of fairness; it is a matter of public safety. Without adequate funding, Cleveland police cannot meet the Government’s own objectives of reducing knife crime, tackling violence against women and girls, and maintaining effective neighbourhood policing.
The people of Cleveland, their PCC and officers on the frontline have done everything asked of them—exceeding recruitment targets, investing in neighbourhood policing and achieving crime reductions above the national average—and of course they made incredible efforts in response to the riot on 4 August 2024. It was the most remarkable response by the police and the community, banding together in the wake of the most violent attack on our community. I must pay tribute to the incredible work the police did, because they have never had to deal with anything like that. They did it with such incredible dedication and professionalism, and we cannot ever be thankful enough to them for their efforts. Again, I just ask the Minister to reconsider this settlement, because I am not convinced that it reflects their efforts, and it redistributes scarce resources to other forces with less need.
I therefore urge the Government to revisit the settlement urgently; to properly resource Cleveland police based on need, deprivation and demand, not on population alone; and to provide the answers that the PCC and our communities deserve. Our officers deserve the support they have earned, and our residents deserve the safety and security that only properly funded policing can provide.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
I would like to start by declaring an interest, in that my father-in-law is the police chaplain for North Yorkshire police and my brother-in-law is an inspector in North Yorkshire police. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Hear, hear, indeed, and I would like to segue from thanking them to thanking Inspector Steve Benbow, who leads the policing team in Cheltenham and does a terrific job in difficult circumstances.
The Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing. Unfortunately, community police numbers fell under the last Conservative Government, and it is clear to me from speaking to people in my constituency and elsewhere that they want a visible and trusted police presence in their community to focus on preventing and solving crimes. Far too many crimes—shoplifting, bike theft, tool theft and so many more—go unsolved at the moment, and ordinary people pay the price. Police stations and front desks are disappearing at an alarming rate even under this Government, leaving people with nowhere to go.
Labour has promised the public 13,000 more police officers, but instead frontline officer numbers have fallen. By September last year, we had 1,300 fewer officers than the year before, and in March 2025 the number of frontline police officers was down by more than 4,300 compared with March 2024. That is why it is so important to get these police reforms right, and we must see an improvement in frontline policing numbers as soon as possible.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
I would like to highlight one case from Flamstead, where David, who was a toolman and a tradesman, had his van broken into 10 times. On the 10th time, he called the police while the thieves were there, but it still took officers many days to arrive, and he has now decided to retire because it is too expensive to keep going. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why it is so important to have a frontline community service from the police?
Max Wilkinson
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point. When we call the police, we expect them to turn up. I do not blame the police officers for not showing up. If there are simply not enough of them to do the job, that problem is a hangover from the previous Government. This Government must go faster to solve that problem.
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman may have inadvertently suggested that there was a reduction in police numbers. There was a record number of police officers, the highest in this country’s history, when the Conservatives left power. That number has been reduced—frontline, back office and PCSOs; each and every one of them—by the Policing Minister and the Government opposite. I know that the hon. Gentleman, who is always an honest and straightforward Member of this House, would not want to suggest that the Conservatives left us with reduced numbers, when, in fact, they had increased.
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
I concur with the hon. Gentleman’s point on what the Minister has just said. In Cambridgeshire, our named neighbourhood officers—it is a little difficult to pin down exactly how many there are and how big an area they cover—cover a vast area. For example, the officer who covers the town of St Ives—that is the whole town, which has multiple wards—covers every area between St Ives and Ramsey, which also includes several villages. It is for the birds to suggest that Cambridgeshire constabulary will have enough named officers to cover every single ward that is represented currently by local government.
Max Wilkinson
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. That is the point I am trying to draw out. The White Paper is somewhat non-specific on that point. It does say that there will be a named contact for each ward, but the suggestion is that that might be just one person—one police officer or PCSO per ward—and that that officer would have no other responsibilities. I do not believe that that will be the case given the numbers being presented, which means that the White Paper is perhaps somewhat misleading. I am not suggesting for a moment that Ministers would like to mislead the House, but the White Paper does need clarification.
If communities are to have confidence that stretched local police teams can deal with local issues, such as illegal e-scooters and e-bikes, they need certainty that police teams are available and accessible. Failure to do so will lead to more people feeling unsafe and, sadly, to more tragedies. In my Cheltenham constituency, we recently suffered the loss of an 18-year-old, who was riding an illegal e-scooter, in a road traffic collision. In my constituency, and in constituencies up and down the country, we frequently witness e-bikes travelling at speed, often on pavements and in pedestrian areas. An on-street police presence would surely deter such activities. That must be fully funded. Visible policing would also help to deter the onslaught of shoplifting that this nation is suffering. We must hope that the Government’s warm words on that will be backed by action.
We applaud the Government for announcing the impending abolition of police and crime commissioners. We Liberal Democrats have long opposed the politicisation of policing and we believe the money should be spent elsewhere. However, there is a risk that splitting the powers of police and crime commissioners between directly elected mayors and the Home Secretary will perpetuate the same problems with the politicisation of policing that we have experienced since 2012. The Government must ensure that in doing so, they allow crime and police boards, which will be made up of local councillors and representatives of relevant local groups, and will perhaps include mayors, to take over and ensure that police resources—the grant we are talking about today—are properly spent, so that we do not see money being wasted.
The Liberal Democrats are also calling for a police front desk in every community across the country. These would be in community hubs such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls. Such an approach would allow people to report crimes or share information with the police face to face in convenient and accessible locations.
Graham Stuart
When I met the chief constable of Humberside last week, he talked about Bobbi, an AI tool that is now able to meet 75%, and up to 90%, of queries. Does the hon. Gentleman envisage the desks always being manned, or would a computer or AI-based system be suitable in his view?
Max Wilkinson
We envisage them being staffed. Clearly, people want to see police face to face. AI can have a role, although we all know there was a cautionary tale from the west midlands recently that we would all like to put behind us. AI surely has a role, but in the proposals the Liberal Democrats are putting forward there would be staffed desks in convenient community hubs. I ask Ministers to consider that.
As Members will know, crime is not only concentrated in cities and towns. Many Members here in the Chamber represent rural constituencies. NFU Mutual estimated that the cost of rural crime in 2024 was as high as £44.1 million—a shocking cost to our countryside. We must consider the impact on those who live in rural areas, specifically farmers who are having a really difficult time. Their mental health and wellbeing can be badly harmed by crime. A survey of 115 NFU Mutual agents found that 92% believed rural crime was disrupting farming activities in their area and that 86% knew farmers who had been repeat victims of crime, leaving them feeling vulnerable in both their workplace and in their home. Rural communities have seen increasingly organised and damaging offences, yet only a small proportion of the police workforce is dedicated to tackling them. Rural crime is currently dealt with by just 0.4% of the overall police workforce.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about rural crime. My concern is that as the boundaries of police forces become greater, the resources tend to go to the urban areas. We see that in east Devon, where Cranbrook has sucked in resources from villages and towns that have previously had a police presence. Does he recognise that the effect of police being pulled into urban areas is being seen in other parts of the country?
Max Wilkinson
I thank my hon. Friend for his timely intervention. On the issue of policing structures, if the Government impose wider boundaries, as they intend to, we need to ensure that they follow through on their pledges on local community policing areas. The responses we heard in the debate from many Members about five minutes ago tell us that the Government have not yet told the story in a way that will reassure my community or his.
Rural communities are increasingly concerned by the increase in crime they are seeing and want to be reassured that Ministers are allocating the funding that is needed to tackle it. In the report we are considering today, there are few references to rural areas and the countryside. Can we be reassured that rural crime will be tackled by a specific team in every police force? We are calling for a “countryside copper guarantee”, which would see properly resourced, dedicated rural crime teams or specialists embedded in every police force. Will the Government pledge to deliver the equipment, specialist knowledge and communication tools needed to tackle these crimes effectively?
The shadow Home Secretary mentioned facial recognition technology. We accept that this technology has the potential to improve the outlook for members of the public and to make the police’s job easier, too, but it does place our civil liberties at risk, and we must not be relaxed about that. In December 2025, the UK’s data protection watchdog asked the Home Office for “urgent clarity” over the racial bias of police facial recognition technology. Official Home Office research has shown that the technology identifies the wrong person about 100 times as often for Asian and black people as white people and twice as often for women as men.
We seek reassurances that this technology will not be used unless the data can be safely captured, and seek assurance from Ministers that those in minority communities will not be misidentified and wrongly arrested. We hope that Ministers can reassure us that the data will be stored appropriately and that this will not result in the widespread retention of data relating to innocent people. Will the Government consider statutory guidance on this technology to ensure that each police force takes a common and safe approach?
Chris Philp
I just want to pick up two points the hon. Gentleman raised, which I looked into when I was Minister for Policing. First, he raised allegations of racial disproportionality, which arose in 2017 or 2018. The system has subsequently been updated significantly. It was tested by the National Physical Laboratory two or three years ago, and, at the setting the police use it, there is now no racial disproportionality at all. It is a historic problem that has now been fixed. Secondly, on data retention, the system operates in such a way that if a member of the public who is not on the wanted list—like me or the hon. Gentleman, I assume—walks past the camera, our image is then automatically and immediately deleted. I hope that addresses his concern about data retention.
Max Wilkinson
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for addressing those two points. I can reassure him that I am not on the wanted list, although I can speak only for myself. That was a useful clarification, but I would like it from Ministers as well; perhaps the Minister will be able to reassure me when she sums up.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who is sitting beside the Policing Minister, will share my view that police must be better at tackling violence against women and girls. I know that she has done a huge amount of work on this. Survivors of VAWG and domestic abuse deserve to know that properly funded support services will be there, and we must also be reassured that the police have the training to enable them to address so-called honour-based abuse.
The Government should look at introducing high-quality programmes for perpetrators in domestic abuse cases, with the aim of preventing further abuse, and Ministers must make it easier for victims who are already suffering to come forward. The Government should also consider rolling out a Home Office-led national public awareness campaign that tackles the myths around domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, signposts victims to support services and promotes the role of the new VAWG taskforce; there is already some really good publicity going out that we will have seen on our televisions.
Survivors must always be able to safely report incidents to the police, although the complexities of these cases mean there are additional needs that must be addressed. We seek reassurance that police forces will provide for anonymous reporting options and embedding VAWG and domestic abuse specialists in every 999 operator assistance centre—both important measures to help victims to report incidents to the police. These measures should bring together officers and specialists with the training, resources and capacity to effectively support survivors, including by working in partnership with frontline women’s services. Will the Minister therefore commit to establishing specialist taskforces in every police force?
Finally, we ask whether, in considering this report, we are yet again looking at smoke and mirrors—it is the same with funding no matter which party is in government. The Government’s figures assume a maximum police precept rise in every local area, pushing part of the funding settlement discussion to local areas. Should Governments of all colours not just be clearer about that in their communications?
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Before I make my remarks and my plea to the Government, I must respond to the complete nonsense from the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and other Members on the Opposition Benches. The 14 years following 2010 saw catastrophic cuts to the police service, a rise in recorded crime, unmanageable police force budget deficits, the demise of neighbourhood policing and the near destruction of the Probation Service. No part of the criminal justice system was spared from mismanagement. It is incredible that the penny still has not dropped that when austerity is forced on an area, antisocial behaviour and fragile communities are the outcome. Opposition Members will have to excuse this Government for not taking lectures from them.
This debate is crucial as it is about how we fund the services that keep our communities safe and resilient. Safe communities are the foundation of economic growth and local prosperity; businesses invest where towns feel secure, families settle where neighbourhoods are stable, and regeneration succeeds when antisocial behaviour is tackled and police are visible and responsive. Public safety underpins economic renewal and long-term confidence.
Our police and crime commissioner, Joy Allen, has raised serious and legitimate concerns about the structural pressures faced in Durham and Darlington under the current funding framework. Those concerns are about not performance—Durham constabulary is highly regarded and delivers daily for our communities—but capacity and sustainability. Durham has one of the lowest council tax bases in England and a very high proportion of band A properties, meaning that each £1 added to the police precept raises significantly less locally than it does in many other force areas. In practice, a 1% increase in the precept in County Durham generates £490,000, while in Surrey it generates approximately £1.7 million. At a time when we are rightly focused on narrowing the north-south divide, the funding framework risks reinforcing it.
North Road in Durham is a clear example of why sustained neighbourhood policing matters. It is one of the city’s busiest corridors and has, at times, been a hotspot for shoplifting and antisocial behaviour, particularly drug and alcohol abuse, placing real pressure on local traders and creating a perception of fear for residents and visitors. In response, Durham constabulary has worked with businesses to introduce the Shop Watch scheme, and it now holds regular meetings with retailers to share intelligence, co-ordinate action and improve visibility. That kind of partnership approach is starting to make a difference, but it relies on having the capacity and presence on the ground to sustain it.
County Durham also covers a large and diverse geographical area, with dispersed rural communities creating distinct policing pressures in terms of travel time, visibility and response. A prime example is when yobs on e-bikes terrorise our villagers, our football clubs and walkers; people feel scared, but police cannot reach them in time to take action. A single national framework does not, therefore, produce equal outcomes. The same policy decision yields very different resources, and over time that gap is compounded.
Between 2010 and 2020, under the Conservative Government, Durham constabulary lost 408 officers—around 20% of its workforce—and officer numbers have still not returned to 2010 levels, meaning sustained pressure on neighbourhood teams and frontline capacity across that wide geography. For three consecutive years, local consultation has shown that residents are willing to invest more when it protects visible neighbourhood policing and community safety. There is democratic backing locally for strengthening capacity. The issue is not willingness, but ability.
When funding depends heavily on council tax capacity, areas with lower property values are structurally constrained, regardless of need or performance. Equal percentage increases in grant do not offset unequal precept yield. If we want to see places like Durham flourish to attract investment, support local business and build confident communities, the framework for funding policing must not entrench the inequality between regions that soared during the Conservatives’ imposed austerity measures. Safer communities—
Graham Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She is making a powerful speech. As she says, there will be a regressive impact from this police grant settlement, which is going to see higher and higher council tax on low-earning residents in her area, and because of rising costs, reduced policing. That is obviously concerning. I wonder how she is going to take that up with Ministers to try to effect change.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I remind Members that it is completely up to them whether they wish to take an intervention.
Mary Kelly Foy
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I was happy to take that intervention. To the right hon. Member’s point—[Interruption.] If he cares to listen to my response, what he said is exactly what I am doing now: I am urging the Government to look again at the council tax precept. We are playing catch-up for the years of mismanagement and austerity when his party was in government.
Safer communities enable growth. The settlement should reflect that principle fairly and consistently across the country if we are ever to repair the damage caused by the Conservative Government’s period in office.
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.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Smoke and mirrors, indeed.
Last month’s police reform White Paper does little to clear up any confusion. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners said:
“We are aware the cost of police reform has been estimated at around £500 million. While the Government has announced that £119 million will be allocated to the reform programme in 2026/27”.
Those police and crime commissioners have been scrapped, and in 2028 police governance will be transferred to strategic authority mayors or policing and crime boards. While the White Paper mentions that the latter will be expanded to reflect larger forces in the future, it does not explain how strategic authority mayors’ responsibilities would be restructured.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
The hon. Member is saying that police funding has been cut and that we are getting rid of police and crime commissioners, but is the money not better spent directly with police forces than in the offices of police and crime commissioners?
Ben Obese-Jecty
To be honest, looking at the police and crime commissioners, it has not been clarified exactly how that responsibility is going to work across the country. The point I was trying to make is that we are saying that the authority for policing locally is going to go to strategic mayors. That is fine, but if we are also going to merge forces, who will have primacy among those strategic mayors? In Cambridgeshire, for example, it will be devolved to the mayor of the combined authority, but if that force is to merge with other forces in East Anglia, and if there is a future mayor of Norfolk and Suffolk, which of those two mayors will have primacy over that area?
Graham Stuart
It is just that sort of incoherence that is upsetting my constituents. Humberside police force—the finest in the country—has a mayor on the north bank and another mayor on the south bank, so who exactly will be in charge of the police force? We do not know what will replace it. We do not have the detail, and we do not know what it will cost. All we do know from governance reorganisations through the years is that whoever is in charge, they are normally slower, more costly and do not deliver as much as the Government hoped for at the beginning.
Ben Obese-Jecty
I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I hope that that will clarified by the Minister who winds up, or through further clarification of the White Paper. I have read the White Paper, and it currently is not explained.
We have also received little explanation about how the independent review of force structures will work; who the independent chair will be; when and how they will be appointed; when the terms of reference will be published; and whether we as Members of Parliament will be included within the scope of the “policing stakeholders” referenced in the White Paper. Some clarity regarding the process behind such seismic and sweeping changes desperately needs to be outlined.
There are serious concerns that the new model for policing will not address some of the key resource requirements for rural forces, instead seeing cities and larger towns taking up an ever-growing share of the available resources. Last week I spoke to local National Farmers Union members in my constituency. For the second year running, concerns regarding rural crime, specifically hare coursing, were raised by local farmers. This is a topic that we rarely hear spoken about in this Chamber or by the Government. It is incomprehensible to many that idyllic rural locations could find themselves in the grip of violent and organised crime, but that is the situation that so many find themselves in.
Esther McVey
Is my hon. Friend concerned about not only that but increasing industrial-scale dumping in rural areas and the additional pressures on neighbourhood policing—whether from the increase in illegal immigrants going into hotels and houses of multiple occupancy, or from prisoners being let out of prisons, who neighbourhood police forces have to man-mark because of Labour’s Sentencing Bill?
Ben Obese-Jecty
The police are required to pick up the slack in so many different aspects of this, and I do not think that that is factored into or reflected in the way we are looking at the force structures. I hope that it will be factored into the review of the forces.
Coming back to rural crime, in my constituency of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire constabulary has an effective and successful rural crime action team, but they are only 14 strong and cover a huge rural area. This must be factored into discussions and not risk being lost in the maelstrom of big-ticket policing items brought under national control and a myopic focus on urban and neighbourhood policing. It is my understanding that the rural crime action team, who specialise in dealing with machinery theft, GPS theft and hare coursing, have been moved from being operational support unit officers to being designated as neighbourhood policing officers. They are specialist officers required to do a specialist role. They are not bobbies on the beat in the villages around my constituency and they are never going to be that, so it is annoying to see that they are being restructured in that way. Redesignating rural crime specialist officers as neighbourhood officers to balance the books and tick an administrative box is not going to cut it.
Cambridgeshire constabulary proved itself to be an effective force with the swift manner in which it neutralised the assailant following the Huntingdon train attack last November. Speaking to my local officers, I know that there are huge inconsistencies in the way in which each force is managed, and I ask the Policing Minister for clarity on how those discrepancies will be harmonised intra-force. We know that overtime calculations for police officers lack consistency from force to force, as does the application of the adjustment bank for outstanding hours owed. These issues are affecting officers on the ground. Not every issue in policing is an operational resourcing question. Much of the pressure officers are experiencing is due to administrative inconsistencies, from pay inequality, given the south-east allowance, to officers wearing body armour that is past its expiration date because of failings in the procurement system—a tragic front-page scandal waiting to happen.
To conclude, I ask the Policing Minister to consider: ringfenced funding for rural crime action teams in the new force structure so that rural crime can be eradicated once and for all; pay disparities, particularly in regard to eligibility for the south-east allowance, the application of overtime eligibility and the management of the adjustment bank; and consortium contracting, and particularly the risk posed by reliance on one make of vehicle, including the use of Volvos by any force, given that Volvo is now owned by the Chinese Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. I believe I have a meeting scheduled with the Policing Minister, and I would be keen to continue the discussion around these issues with her on behalf of the officers in my county who have received a raw deal for far too long.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The 2026-27 settlement delivers a cash increase nationally but once again fails to address the structural unfairness faced by rural forces such as Dorset. It does not properly reflect rurality, seasonal population increases or the cumulative impact of more than a decade of underfunding. Dorset police is consistently one of the worst-funded forces in the country. It ranks in the bottom 10 nationally for total funding, receiving around £203 million, and sits at roughly 26th out of the 43 forces on a per capita basis. Despite covering over 1,000 square miles of largely rural geography, Dorset police remains at below the national average for funding per head and far behind most urban and metropolitan forces. The 2026-27 settlement does nothing to change that relative position.
The settlement assumes that police and crime commissioners will raise tax by the full £15 band D precept. In Dorset, that assumption is particularly problematic. Around 51% of Dorset police’s funding already comes from local council tax payers, compared with a national average of 34%, and as little as 20% in some of the better-funded force areas. Because Dorset has a smaller and slower-growing council tax base, even the same £15 increase raises far less in real terms than it does in urban areas. This settlement therefore locks in a reliance on council tax in a way that systematically disadvantages rural counties. We have already seen where this kind of Treasury assumption can lead. Similar flawed assumptions in fire service funding have resulted in plans to close fire stations in Maiden Newton and Charmouth. Once again, decisions are being based on unrealistic expectations of local funding, with consequences for rural communities.
Although the Government have stated that the recent 2.4% police pay settlement is fully funded nationally, in Dorset it is very different. For Dorset police, our settlement alone requires £500,000 of savings to be found locally. Over the past three years, the force has had to make £2.8 million in savings, with a direct impact on staffing levels. Meanwhile, seven forces nationally are able to generate surpluses year after year, while six forces, including Dorset, are forced to find savings just to stand still or, in many cases, regress. This is not a fair or sustainable system. It makes a mockery of the Government’s neighbourhood policing guarantee, even after the proposed long-term reforms. Dorset is one of the 11 forces that has still not returned to 2010 officer levels, and when neighbourhood policing funding is examined in isolation, Dorset is the worst-funded force in the country.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
Over the weekend I went on a walkaround with my local police officers in Boscombe and Springbourne, and they were talking about the need to make sure that, particularly over the summer months, neighbourhood police teams were not seeing—in their words—significant abstractions of police officers from our communities into the seafront and the town centre, because Bournemouth particularly sees very high levels of tourism and large numbers of people coming in from outside who sometimes cause criminality. They also welcome the neighbourhood guarantee, which will see an increase in neighbourhood police forces. Does the hon. Member agree that we need to ensure that we keep our neighbourhood police forces in their neighbourhoods?
Edward Morello
I thank my fellow Dorset MP for his intervention. He will know that we welcome a huge number of tourists, who are vital for our local hospitality and tourism economy. While we want people to come, this does put an incredible strain on our local police forces and the funding needs to reflect that population increase.
Graham Stuart
One of the dangers, while the Government are cutting the police—1,300 last year alone, estimated by my police and crime commissioner, and another 4,000 nationally could go next year—is that they come up with this smoke-and-mirrors talk about neighbourhood policing and ask the hon. Gentleman whether he wants to protect that. If an artificial number, set from the centre, leads to the removal of police officers from where they are needed to meet local need, that is not a good thing. I hope that he, as a proper Liberal Democrat, will recognise that local decision making needs to guide this most, and that we need to have a Government who are not playing with smoke and mirrors.
Edward Morello
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for saving me from the indignity of not being intervened on by him during this debate. I agree that local police forces need to be local, and that we want bobbies on the beat everywhere.
Forces that routinely generate surpluses are able to invest in more officers, better technology and healthy reserves. Dorset cannot do that. Dorset police serves large, sparsely populated areas such as West Dorset, meaning longer response times, higher fuel costs and fewer economies of scale. Rural areas also tend to have less CCTV, fewer automatic number plate recognition cameras and generally fewer witnesses, making crime harder and more resource-intensive to investigate. National analysis shows that the average rural police force budget is £6.03 million, compared with £8.52 million for urban forces. On top of that, Dorset faces intense seasonal pressures, as we have discussed. West Dorset alone sees a 42% population increase during the peak tourist months and Dorset as a whole receives 25 million day visitors each year.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I want to follow on from the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) in asking the Policing Minister again: would you agree that it is about time we got—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I do not agree, I do agree—I am pretty neutral. The hon. Lady should ask the Member to agree and not use the term “you”.
Vikki Slade
I can only apologise, Madam Chair. Would my hon. Friend agree that the Policing Minister is long overdue in replying to the calls from Dorset MPs and the police and crime commissioner in November last year to look at the seasonality issue, because we simply cannot go on?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. To help other Members in case they should make the same error: I am not “Madam Chair”; I am Madam Deputy Speaker.
Edward Morello
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course, I agree with my Dorset neighbour. All the Dorset MPs have written repeatedly to Ministers to ask for a fairer funding settlement, and I shall speak to some of those issues.
None of the additional demand caused by our population increases during the summer months is properly funded. Dorset police faced a £3.6 million funding deficit in 2024, rising to £7.3 million last year. Despite submitting evidence-backed requests for additional funding of £12.2 million annually to recruit around 250 extra officers and staff, that support has not been provided. Instead, the police force has been forced to cut community support officers by 43%, freeze recruitment, sell vehicles and buildings, restrict overtime and halt non-essential spending.
If the Government are serious about fair policing and neighbourhood visibility, two immediate steps are needed, alongside the restructuring and long-term reforms our rural police service is calling for. The first is greater precept flexibility for forces such as Dorset that are already asking far more of local taxpayers than others. Secondly, as a stopgap, forces holding reserves above 5% should contribute back to a central redistribution pot, particularly when recommended reserve levels are closer to 3%. The proposed reforms come too late to make the difference on the ground that people want to see from their police force. This police grant report delivers more cash, but no structural fixes, and it comes before the police reforms that the Home Secretary laid before the House a few weeks ago have even been implemented.
As part of the reforms, we must reassess how we properly fund rural police forces to allow for proper neighbourhood policing. For rural forces like Dorset, the grant in its current form is closer to standstill funding than a genuine uplift once inflation, demand, population increases and geography are factored in. If we want safer rural communities, visible neighbourhood policing and public confidence in fairness, the funding formula must finally reflect what rural constituencies experience day to day.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
Before I delve into the issues facing policing in Norfolk, I have to discuss some of the simply incredible ways that funding allocations are decided in the police grant report that we are debating. This is just another example of government functioning in a way that is rapidly becoming unfit for purpose and not changing with the times fast enough. An array of complex sums, based on data from as long ago as the 2001 census, dictates how many police officers we can expect to see on the streets in my constituency over the next year.
If we asked the average person on the street how their local police force funding was decided, few would guess that it was decided by a long formula that includes multipliers such as the daytime net inflow in 2001, a population projection for 2013, and the number of unemployed men between 2009 and 2012. The number of pubs and bars in an area is linked to the funding that a police force receives. Under police crime top-ups 1, 3, 4 and 5 and the “fear of crime” top-up, the greater the number of licensed establishment per 100 hectares, the greater the funding multiplier for the police force.
That leads me to a key question that I hope the Minister can answer on this year’s report and next year’s funding settlement. The Chancellor’s ongoing war on pubs is leading to closures across rural areas like mine; can the Minister confirm that under her formula, if a community lost their local pub, their local police force would receive less funding the following year? Surely we can create a clearer, more up-to-date and more workable formula than this—one that uses better data and delivers more funding. I note that Members of the Home Secretary’s own party have called for reflection on this, and so I hope she will take it into consideration.
People in North Norfolk want to be reassured that they are getting a fair deal. I am not sure that the system delivers that for them. Once upon a time, this formula may have delivered well, but given the evolving nature of crime, I do not think that it is well suited to the policing needs of 2026. Whatever logarithms and multipliers the Home Secretary chooses to use, the reality on the ground in my area is clear: our communities feel less safe than they once did. Community policing has been stripped back. Rural crime is not being handled with the seriousness that it deserves.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
Does my county colleague agree that there are particular challenges in Norfolk? Under the previous Conservative police and crime commissioner, not only were all 150 of our police and community support officers made redundant, but many police stations lost their public access, and accessibility and visible policing have been eroded as a result.
Steff Aquarone
Those facts are irrefutable. I will come on to some of the points that the hon. Member makes about the challenges of policing an area like North Norfolk, due to the unique characteristics of our shared county.
We are lucky to have a lower than average rate of crime, but that does not mean that we should have our provision cut, or officer numbers reduced. Security and confidence in public safety are created by a well-funded and trusted police force, not by punishing us for not having enough crime. Maybe the Minister could listen to what her colleague and perhaps future leader, the Health Secretary, says about his focus on prevention. If we view much of crime through a public health lens, we can learn sensible and holistic lessons about stopping crime before it happens, rather than just responding as best we can.
Rural crime across the country is at staggering rates, and that causes real fear for farmers and rural business owners in Norfolk, where our past Conservative police and crime commissioners left us with zero specialist rural crime officers—an unbelievable statistic for such a rural county. Latest stats show that after pressure from the Liberal Democrats, the numbers reached the heady heights of two officers in 2024. Clearly, we have a long way to go. I will work with our PCC and police chiefs to ensure that we can deliver more for tackling rural crime, and that the Government give them what they need to do so.
I have said time and again that I am proud to have the oldest population in the country in North Norfolk, but that brings challenges for policing, and challenges to do with the way that my residents are targeted by criminals. Older people are seen as good marks for fraudsters and scammers. In Norfolk last year, £4.5 million was lost through investment fraud. In 2023, almost £100,000 was lost to pension fraud; some had their retirement savings ripped away. We have to crack down on this awful crime, which has serious financial and emotional impacts on its victims.
It saddens me that the prevalence of fraud and scams could make our communities less trusting and confident in the goodness of others, all because of criminal groups out there who steal their hard-earned money. For all the benefits that artificial intelligence can bring, we need to accept, sadly, that this will be one of the ways in which it can be damaging. Scammers with access to AI can use it to make their scams more widespread and efficient; it will allow them to hit more people in shorter timeframes. When the long-promised AI Bill comes to the House, it would be great if steps were taken to address that. We Liberal Democrats have called for the establishment of an online crime agency to focus on fraud and scammers who prey on constituents like mine. I hope that the Government will look carefully at our proposals, and will take action to stop these criminals damaging our communities.
I am not sure how many more police grant reports we will debate in this House that will have Norfolk as its own line item, as the Government’s White Paper seems to be strongly flirting with the idea of merging us with two or even three other counties. That is just another step taking us further away from policing in the community, and from an understanding of what an area needs. A lack of local leadership, making police chiefs even more distant, and the notion that policing priorities in Stalham could be dictated from as far away as Peterborough do not make sense to our constituents.
The Government are returning to type. They are centralising power, and trying to sell it back to us with the promise of some meagre back-office savings. That is their approach to local government reorganisation, to devolution and now to policing as well. We want them to ensure that Norfolk can stop and solve crime, and to make our community safer, not waste time and energy rejigging structures without a promise of improved outcomes.
North Norfolk is a fantastic community, which is lucky to see less crime than other parts of the country, but that is something we have worked hard to achieve. I am grateful for the hard work of Norfolk constabulary, which keeps my constituents safe and supported. It is time for the Government to listen to their needs and ensure that the money and resource needed to keep us safe is being delivered.
Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) said earlier, Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing. After years of Conservative chaos and mismanagement, it is clear in Wokingham and across the country that there are not enough police officers. Residents in Wokingham are always telling me that they want to see more bobbies on the beat and a visible and trusted police presence in our communities, focusing on preventing and solving crimes.
That community presence is important, but it is not the only reason why we need greater police numbers; many in Wokingham tell me that they need to see better police responses to crime as well. Shop managers do not want to feel that shoplifting is not important when they contact the police. Early last year, I visited several stores in Wokingham, Emmbrook and Arborfield to speak with managers about shoplifting. Stores were seeing increasingly frequent and targeted incidents of shoplifting, which was impacting their businesses and customers. It was clear that store managers need better responses from the police when it comes to tackle shoplifting as the incident is happening. Needless to say, better police responses on tackling crimes as they happen also help prevent future crimes. If the Government really want to restore neighbourhood policing and rebuild public trust in policing, they need to ensure that reforms are done properly, and that more police officers are put on our streets and in our communities.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I join the House in thanking our frontline police officers and staff for their incredible commitment, and the contribution and sacrifices that they make to keep our streets safe. I am grateful to the Minister for her statement, though I must say that it has the familiar quality of a Government announcing success, while the public are left wondering where exactly it has occurred. The Minister has come to the House today to present this police funding settlement as a turning point—as if police numbers are not actually falling, and as if criminals across the country are now packing up their tools and reconsidering their life choices.
However, outside Westminster, the country looks rather different. The public judge policing in a far more old-fashioned way than Ministers. They judge it not by the tone of a statement, but by whether they see officers on the streets, whether the police answer the telephone and turn up, and whether crime is dealt with when it happens—and on those measures, too many of our constituents feel that policing is being stretched to breaking point. This debate cannot take place without us confronting the central fact behind it: Labour promised more police on our streets, but since it entered government, police officer numbers have fallen by more than 1,300. That is not a minor adjustment, or an accounting quirk; it is 1,300 fewer police officers available to respond to crime, protect victims and patrol our communities.
Matt Bishop
The shadow Minister talks about reductions in officer numbers. Has he considered perhaps that those officers were coming to retirement, or were suffering ill health and were on restricted duties, and were not the officers seen by the public on the street, so the public perception is just the same?
Matt Vickers
This is the net number of police officers making the difference out there on Britain’s streets. There were 149,769; there are now nearly 2,000 fewer—that has a real impact. We hear all this noise about neighbourhood policing. Neighbourhood policing has a huge part to play in the policing model, but we cannot take away the police who respond to 999 calls. Should we badge police up, redeploy them, and leave people waiting longer for a 999 response when they really need one?
Graham Stuart
In his powerful speech, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) talked about the rise in scammers and fraudsters. I am concerned about the fact that Humberside will get a 2.4% funding increase, according to a public announcement by Ministers. The police and crime commissioner has shown that, when costs are taken into account, that represents a 2.9% cut. That is why 1,300 police officers have been cut so far, and it is why another reduction of 4,000 is expected next year. The Minister can go through a carefully curated number of neighbourhood officers, but the overall number is down, and the Government are not being straight with us.
Matt Vickers
I could not agree more. That is why the number of robberies against businesses has surged, shoplifting is up, and people feel less safe on our streets. Between September 2024 and September 2025—entirely on this Government’s watch—the number of officers fell by 1,318, compared with the year before. More broadly, 3,000 fewer people are working in police forces across the country to keep us safe.
Andy McDonald
I hear what the shadow Minister says about police numbers, but what did he say when Cleveland lost 500 police officers on his Government’s watch? Was he concerned then?
Matt Vickers
Back in 2010, I was deeply concerned about lots of things—the damage to our economy, the number of people without a job, the challenge of the difficult choices that the Government had to make—but the previous Government left office with record numbers of police on our streets.
Richard Foord
Measuring police effectiveness by looking solely at numbers is absolutely flawed. Does the shadow Minister accept in retrospect that the way in which Theresa May allowed police numbers to plummet while claiming that crime was falling was completely flawed? We lost a lot of experience in those years.
Matt Vickers
When the Conservatives last left office, we had record numbers of police on the streets. I do not know how many police officers we had on the streets when the Liberal Democrats last left office. [Interruption.] I will make some progress.
In terms of headcount, the picture is starker. In March 2024, under the previous Government, there were 149,769 officers—the highest number since records began. As of September 2025, that number stands at 147,621—a decrease of more than 2,000. When the Minister speaks about supporting the police, the House is entitled to ask a simple question: how can the Government support policing while presiding over fewer police?
Worryingly, the bad news does not stop there. The number of officers in the British Transport police and the number of staff in the National Crime Agency have also decreased, all while the Government announce a national police service that will be created from organisations such as the NCA. The staff who will make up that service are leaving. That is critical because the grant that we are discussing comes against the backdrop of many forces warning about their long-term financial stability.
As the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council said:
“The overall financial picture remains challenging. Many forces are planning service reductions, with consequences for officer numbers, staff capacity and overall resilience.”
That is a direct consequence of the Government’s decisions. There are real funding challenges, here and now, with real consequences for forces and communities across the country. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners says that this year’s settlement leaves police forces with a shortfall that could be as high as £500 million.
Labour’s own police and crime commissioners across the country have spoken out on the challenges. In my own part of the world, Labour PCC Matt Storey has said that Cleveland police have to operate with
“one hand behind their back”,
and that funding has
“failed to keep pace with the level of inflation, while other funding has been removed and re-allocated”,
making it impossible to maintain current levels of service. I understand that he has written to the Minister on three occasions and is still awaiting a response. Durham’s Labour police and crime commissioner has been even more direct in her criticism. She said that the Labour Government have
“consistently demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of policing and community safety.”
The Minister will no doubt point with great enthusiasm to headline figures. Such spin fails to acknowledge inflation, pay awards and the ongoing cost of the Government’s jobs tax. Many at home will be stunned that our police forces were subjected to hundreds of millions of pounds of costs by way of the national insurance increase, and that the Government have actually taxed the police off our streets. This settlement is not the straightforward increase that the Minister claims it is. It relies heavily on the police precept, pushing more of the burden on to local taxpayers, while forces face rising costs and rising demand.
In 2023, an MP told this House that the then Government’s approach was to
“put up local taxes, put up council tax, push the problem on to local forces”,
and that
“Ministers have chosen to heap the burden on to hard-pressed local taxpayers through the precept.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2023; Vol. 727, c. 935.]
Any idea who that might have been? [Interruption.] Yes, it was the current Policing Minister. Given the Government’s fondness for U-turns, I am not surprised by the Minister’s change of view.
Jess Phillips
If the shadow Minister was so upset about this, why did he not do anything about it?
Matt Vickers
An increasing burden is being put on local taxpayers. Members can say one thing in opposition, but then they enter government and have to make real choices. Labour’s choices have meant cuts to police numbers, increases in the burden on local taxpayers, and spiralling levels of retail crime and robbery against businesses.
The consequences of that approach are as obvious today as they were then. The reliance on the police precept entrenches a postcode lottery in policing. Areas with strong council tax bases can raise more; areas with weaker council tax bases cannot. Yet the need for policing does not neatly align with local prosperity. Criminals do not check council tax bands before committing burglary. Nor do they decide where to operate based on local authority revenue forecasts. Yet under this Government’s model, two communities can face the same crime pressures but receive very different policing capacity simply because one can raise more money than the other. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what changed her mind about increasing the burden on local taxpayers for funding the police. Given the articulate case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty)—and by the Minister when in opposition—will she tell us when the funding formula review will take place?
The pressures on policing are not diminishing; they are growing. Forces are dealing with county lines, drug gangs exploiting children, organised crime operating across borders, cyber-crime and fraud expanding at an industrial scale, and domestic abuse cases that require extensive time, safeguarding and specialist capacity. They are also dealing with public order demands, which have become increasingly routine. This is a modern landscape of threats that requires modern capacity, and it cannot be met with funding settlements designed for ministerial speeches rather than frontline realities. This settlement will ultimately be judged not by the Minister’s tone, but by its results.
This debate comes down to the difference between saying and doing. The Government can say that they support policing, but too many see numbers falling. They can say that they support victims, but too many see no justice. And they can claim to be tough on crime, while quietly introducing early-release schemes that put offenders back on our streets sooner. Until the Government’s actions match their words, the public will not be convinced—and nor should they be.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
I thank all the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate—there was a big representation from the Liberal Democrats. I will not repeat the details of the settlement, as they were set out very clearly by my hon. Friend the Policing Minister. However, I will re-emphasise the importance of the significant investment in policing. It plays a key role in our programme of police reform, through which we will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our police service, and ensure that our police are equipped for the future. The settlement also supports neighbourhood policing, which is the bedrock of the British policing model. We are listening to feedback from forces and giving them flexibility to shape their workforce and meet the demands of modern policing.
I will now come to the points raised in the debate.
Jess Phillips
The right hon. Gentleman raised many such points, so he will excuse me if I do not give way now.
It seems that the whole House can agree that no one likes the funding formula. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) gave an especially good trot-through of that issue. While he is not of my political stripes, he is considerably better than the previous right hon. Member for North Norfolk, who bears some responsibility for the damage that this Government are having to fix. The funding formula is fundamentally—[Interruption.] If hon. Members would like to intervene or think that I have said something that I should not have said, they should feel free to defend the former right hon. Member for North Norfolk, the one-time Prime Minister who crashed the economy.
Graham Stuart
As ever, I am afraid that this Minister gets her facts wrong. Despite that frailty, she is none the less straightforward and pretty outspoken. We get so few direct answers these days, so I look to her to provide them to two questions: are there fewer police officers now than there were when Labour came to power? And were there record numbers at that time? Are those two facts correct or are the Conservatives misleading the House, which we would not want to do?
Jess Phillips
I will come to the points that were raised in the debate, and that is one that the right hon. Gentleman raised many times.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) asked a specific question about the baseline. The baseline of the number of police personnel working in neighbourhood policing, which is measured from 31 March, was 17,715. Today that figure is 20,687.
I will tell a story about my recent visit to Cumbria police. I visited a call centre, where brilliant work was being done, and where I met some brilliant domestic violence advisers. However, the people staffing the call centre were warranted police officers. I do not think that warranted police officers should be staffing the call centres in police departments.
Jess Phillips
I will make some progress.
I do not think that those warranted police officers should be doing that. That is why we are tilting to increase the number of police, getting 12,000 of them from behind desks to where they need to be: working on the frontline.
The consensus from Members in the House today, including my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) and others from different parties, is that some unfairness exists in the funding formula. It would be ridiculous to reform the police funding formula, carry out all of the police reforms that will come out of the planned review of policing, and then paste the funding formula on to that completely new programme.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon has already laid out his questions about the White Paper, but the point is that there will be a review of policing. I like the way hon. Members have started to use the term “mega-forces” as if they will be a bad thing. To me, they sound quite cool, like something out of “RoboCop”—which is not Government policy. It is for the hon. Gentleman and every other Member to take part in that review, ask questions, such as the ones he asked today, and represent their areas.
The hon. Members who have spoken today largely come from rural or semi-rural communities. From listening to that debate, people would be forgiven for thinking that where I live is basically a police state, where if someone calls the police, they will be out in five minutes. I recognise exactly the same issues that Members representing rural constituencies raised—that the police do not always come when people need them—and the needs of their police forces. One of the forces mentioned was West Mercia and there seemed to be an idea that that force would suck resources away from Birmingham, but I feel the same way about other bits of Birmingham, and indeed other parts of the country. That is why we need to reform the system.
I was in a meeting this morning with three of the most senior police officers in our country, who are part of the new violence against women and girls policing unit created by this Government. We were talking about the disparity between the 43 different police forces—stalking or honour crime may be tackled well in one area but not in another—and the domestic abuse risk assessments that they use. In that meeting, I thought, “Gosh, we are going to have the opportunity to start from first principles.” If I were to design the police force today on behalf of women and children in our country, I would not be designing the systems that we have today, so I ask people to enter into the issue of police reform in that spirit.
On the policing funding formula, there is no doubt, as hon. Members have mentioned—I suffer from this in Birmingham, as well—that a council tax base that is low has a disproportionate impact. When the funding formula is reformed, as part of the overall reform of policing, it will absolutely have to rely on need, deprivation and demand, as was laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. Need can do a huge amount of heavy lifting for things like seasonality, which was raised by a number of hon. Members.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jess Phillips
I will give way to the hon. Member for Huntingdon and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash).
Ben Obese-Jecty
The Minister mentions the factors that will go into the police allocation formula. That formula is currently based on the 2014 population size, and density and sparsity figures from 2001. However, since that formula first came into effect, an additional 300,000 people now live in Cambridgeshire. Will that be factored into the formula? From what date will the population data be taken? Will it be the 2021 census or the 2011 census?
Jess Phillips
To answer the hon. Gentleman’s first question, yes, of course that will be factored in. Did he say 2001? I really enjoyed the conflab in the debate about who was to blame for what—it went back to things being blamed on the last Labour Government. I would like to remind hon. Members that we have to be careful about the way we are seen, because I was not old enough to vote when the last Labour Government came to power. Perhaps we should update some of the references. The idea that the figures we use will date from 2001 seems completely and utterly ridiculous, but the review that will be undertaken will look at that. All I can say is that it will be as recent as one would expect and as recent as is possible with data. [Interruption.] I can see that people are keen for me to be quiet.
Mr Brash
My hon. Friend talks about a new funding formula needing to be based on need and the challenges that the precept creates. We are never going to get fairness if the council tax system is the method of doing this. Is she ruling out getting rid of the police precept as a method of raising funding?
Jess Phillips
Far be it from me to have the authority to do that right now—I have to be honest. My colleagues who are responsible for local government and policing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), are sat on the Front Bench, and they will have heard the concern about that interplay. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) is absolutely right: this is about need and trying to ensure that we look at the different things that different areas face.
We are committed to giving the police the resources that they need, and that is exactly what this settlement does. We want to see robust neighbourhood policing that engages with the public to build trust and confidence. We are grateful for all the work that the incredible men and women of our police service do, and we are therefore determined to provide them with the capability and flexibility that they have asked for through the funding, in order that they have the tools they require. The removal of arbitrary targets for officer numbers means that local chiefs have more flexibility to shape their workforce, meet the demands of modern policing and do the vital work behind the scenes.
This settlement is only the first step. The 2026-27 settlement provides the police with the immediate resources needed to continue their invaluable work, alongside the opportunity to invest in the future, and I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2026–27 (HC 1638), which was laid before this House on 28 January, be approved.