Police Funding

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

I do not think that the Minister is deliberately trying to mislead the House, but is it not fair to say that the 12% cut that the former Home Secretary mentioned would be subject to exactly the same precept conditions, so it would have been reduced in the same way as he has reduced his 20% cut to 14%? He has therefore inadvertently misled the House on that point. Of course, he also completely misleads the House in relation to the west midlands—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may disagree with the Minister, but he cannot accuse him of misleading the House because he is using figures that the hon. Gentleman does not agree with.

[Steve McCabe]

I am happy to apologise. I was suggesting that the Minister was inadvertently misleading the House by quoting figures that do not stand up to scrutiny.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I heard the hon. Gentleman very clearly and he said it twice. I am glad that he has clarified that he believed that it was not deliberate.

[Nick Herbert]

I repeat that the Opposition proposed cuts of exactly the same magnitude. Indeed, the shadow Chancellor—when he was shadow Home Secretary—told the House on 8 September that as Home Secretary he had set out savings of £1.3 billion over the next four years, or about 12% of the Home Office budget. He also said that the HMIC report confirmed that, with a lot of effort, it would be possible to save 12% without affecting front-line services—[Interruption.] Those are not my words: they are the words of the shadow Chancellor.

As I pointed out on Monday, the shadow Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee seminar in Cannock on 22 November that this is a tighter environment for police spending and would be under any Government. Let us nail once and for all the idea that the Opposition would not have cut police spending. They would, and they have admitted it. The order of cuts that they would have made in police spending is exactly the same as we are asking the police to make now—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

I will happily take this opportunity to say that I wrote to Sir Denis O’Connor yesterday on the matter, and I copied the letter to the Policing Minister. In that letter I say that I have not criticised—and will not criticise—the 11% statistic, which was drawn up by HMIC. What I have consistently criticised is the way in which that statistic has been used, in a misleading and smearing way, by Ministers—the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Policing Minister—to do down the important work of the police. The Minister says that 11% of the time is spent on visible policing, with the other 89% wasted on bureaucracy. That excludes people working on organised crime, in CID, on domestic violence, or on child abuse. That is the smear.

Also, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I just read out the HMIC report, which says:

“A re-design of the system…has the potential”—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that he was making an intervention. I think that he has made his point, and the intervention was getting a little long. It would be very helpful if when putting forcefully the arguments on either side of the House, all Members could avoid casting any aspersions on the correctness of another person’s view.

[Nick Herbert]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I strongly agree with that. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman has been caught out—