Solihull Police Station: Proposed Closure

Debate between Mike Wood and Julian Knight

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight]

I concur with my right hon. Friend. The royal town of Sutton Coldfield has been in the trenches with me over the last few years following this disgraceful attack on our constituents, which is completely unnecessary for the reasons I will now outline.

I accept it is easy to speak against a police station closure, so I hope Members will allow me to outline what I believe to be the legitimate reasons why Solihull police station must remain open. First, it primarily serves the south of Solihull borough, which includes my constituency and some of the villages in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, including Dickens Heath, Dorridge, Knowle and Hampton in Arden. We are talking about a population of around 127,000 residents. The fact that an area with such a dense population is going to lose its only operational police base is nothing less than a scandal and a travesty.

It is also important to remember that in 2015 the previous Labour police and crime commissioner closed Shirley police station. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) and I were told that, magically, there would be a police presence, and what has happened? Absolutely zilch.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has alluded to the previous police and crime commissioner closing various police stations in Dudley borough, including Stourbridge, Kingswinford and Netherton among others. When he announced that Brierley Hill police station would be closing in the next two or three years to open a new police station in Dudley town centre, moving our only remaining police station from the centre of the borough to the far corner of the borough, he promised that a meaningful police presence would remain in Brierley Hill town centre. Does my hon. Friend agree that it needs to be a proper police station with officers operating out of it, not just a locker and an office?

[Julian Knight]

I completely concur with my hon. Friend, and we are in a similar situation. Frankly, cars will have to come from Tally Ho and Coventry, which is far too long a response time for my constituents.

In response to my constituents’ rightful frustrations, the police and crime commissioner stated in his estate review that

“locations for public contact offices in Solihull and Sutton will continue to be explored”.

That is very big of him. There is absolutely no commitment to give Solihull a public contact office. A number of questions have been raised as to what a public contact office really means. Reference has been made to it merely being a desk in a library with someone wearing a bit of hi-vis. For 127,000 people a desk in a library, 9 to 3, hi-vis—that is it, done. It is absolutely ridiculous, a travesty and a disgrace.

How can I honestly encourage my constituents to report crime, particularly crime of a personal and sensitive nature, to a police desk in the middle of a public space that is open only at certain hours and where they do not know precisely to whom they are speaking? What if one of my constituents suffering from physical and emotional abuse does not, for whatever reason, have access to a telephone and wants to seek refuge in a secure policing environment? That will now not be available anywhere in my large town.

As my constituent Mr Thompson of Compton Close—not the other Mr Thompson—put it brilliantly:

“We have already suffered the closure of the Shirley police station. It’s clear this next step is unacceptable to all Silhillians. Solihull residents deserve more than the muted ‘desk’ to take concerns. We deserve and should expect a local Police station with officers to respond directly to our needs.”

The police and crime commissioner tries to defend this cruel decision to close Solihull police station by using the usual line from the Opposition Benches, which are empty tonight, that West Midlands police has suffered from cuts and austerity. In a press release, he stated that once again—

“a decade of reckless Government cuts.”

Home Office data on direct money shows that from 2018-19 to 2021-22 it has gone up from £442 million to £694 million—an uplift of £250 million in four years. So, in light of the substantial increase in direct subsidies from the Home Office, straight into the PCC’s office, we have to ask ourselves why on earth he has decided to put forward plans to permanently close our police stations, when funding is proportionally higher than it was many years ago.

I would also draw the House’s attention to the fact that, as a result of more Government funding to the Labour police and crime commissioner, West Midlands police has managed to recruit hundreds of new police officers. Indeed, it admits in a statement that since the general election, this Conservative Government have managed to recruit 867 police officers across the west midlands. With the hundreds of additional police officers on the beat across the west midlands, particularly in Solihull, the PCC clearly forgets that we need adequate space to house those new officers. By closing Solihull police stations and those of my hon. Friends, and other stations across the west midlands, the PCC is drastically reducing the size of the constabulary’s estate just as the police force is growing, which means fewer desks, less officers and a reduction in the number of cells.

I am sure hon. Members know just how often we are contacted by our constituents about the levels of crime in our areas. I am contacted daily by constituents about the concern that exists about the substantial rise in crime across Solihull, which has been going on for many years. In particular the fear of violent crime, knife crime and burglary is a real concern to my residents. In December 2019 we had the murder of 21-year-old Jack Donoghue outside Popworld; he was simply enjoying a night out.

Lockdown has created difficulties in assessing crime statistics. However, despite our not having the full crime statistics for 2020-21, I can confirm to the House that of those that are already reported, 666 individual cases of violent crime have been reported in Solihull in the last year alone. That is already a massive increase on the data for 2020, when we had 574 such incidents. Undoubtedly, West Midlands police has a reputation—a very unwelcome reputation—for suffering large-scale knife crimes. What is the answer, I ask? Well, the answer of this police and crime commissioner is first to stop stop and search; that is a great way to stop knife crime. And the other one is to close our police stations, despite the huge uplift in moneys that come, not only from the precept, but from central Government.

My constituents deserve better. They deserve permanent policing. Theirs is a large town, a vibrant town, a town with many older residents who need the safety and protection that is the very basic that we all ask for ourselves and our society.

It is no secret that I have always been sceptical about the role of police and crime commissioner. In the financial year 2019-20—and who can blame him, frankly—the West Midlands PCC’s office spent £437,000 on salaries for the PCC, his deputies and the senior statutory officers alone, money that I believe should instead be spent on frontline national policing.

To conclude, if we are not going to get rid of the role of police and crime commissioner—and I would be absolutely delighted if we did—we have to fold it into the role of the Mayor of the West Midlands, someone who actually knows what he is doing and is not an ideologue, and does not think that the cure for knife crime is less stop and search.