Lord Coaker
Main Page: Lord Coaker (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Coaker's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Herbert
The hon. Gentleman should know that, in police forces generally, a third of human resources are not on the front line. Well over 20,000 police officers are in back and middle-office positions, with a higher than average proportion of them in the West Midlands constabulary. It should be possible to drive savings while still protecting the front line. That is what we ask and expect chief constables to do.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
Given the Minister’s numbering problems at the outset of these questions, he probably now recognises the importance of having a good back office.
I have read again a copy of the HMIC report, “Demanding Times”, which was published in June 2011. He will know that a table on page 4 states that only 5% of police officers and PCSOs perform back-office functions, many of them necessary. With more than 16,000 police officers to be cut during the next few years of the spending review, does this not show what we already know—that there is and will be an impact on the front line from these cuts, with the loss of uniformed and neighbourhood officers and detectives?