Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend reminds the House of the eternal truth of, I think, principle 7 of Robert Peel’s nine principles of policing—that the public are the police and the police are the public. I congratulate Spencer and Paul on working with the police to bring criminals to justice.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

T10.   Earlier the Home Secretary was asked about delays to the Windrush compensation scheme. There have been reports this week that one of the reasons for the delays is that he has apparently requested an extra £150 million from other Cabinet colleagues and from the Treasury, otherwise the scheme will not be able to go forward. Is it is true that he has made such a request to the Treasury or the rest of the Cabinet? If so, for how much, and is this why the scheme is being delayed?

Police Funding Settlement

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his representations on behalf of Staffordshire police. He knows how important it is for his constituents that the police are well supported. This is indeed a settlement that has the capacity to increase investment into Staffordshire policing by up to £13 million. The excellent PCC Matthew Ellis has got some choices to make, but he will be supported by an increased grant from central Government. I thank my hon. Friend for his support for this settlement.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The police Minister knows that I have seen for myself the pressures facing South Wales police, particularly in Cardiff, not just from the increasing demand from everything from county lines to spice to missing persons, but from the specific demands on it as a capital city hosting major events and as a seat of Government. The Minister met me, the chief constable and the PCC, and we made a very reasonable request to him; I wonder if he has had a chance to consider it further and has anything hopeful to say to us. On the police pensions gap, I appreciate what he said about next year, but beyond that the gap is projected to be £417 million a year, £10 million of which would fall as a burden on South Wales police. Where is that money going to come from in the future?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman made a powerful representation on behalf of Cardiff, which I am genuinely and seriously looking at. The more specific answer to that and his broader question around pension costs is rooted in the strategy for the CSR, which is active work under way in anticipation of a spending review next year. He talks about a pensions gap; there is not a pensions gap in 2019-20 as a result of this settlement, and I am determined that through the CSR, with the full support of the Home Secretary, we will get a robust settlement for the police that allows them to increase their capacity and improve their response to changing demand.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I assure my right hon. Friend that we are looking at all our options on a spectrum. We have a set of regulations on the use of airguns, but we are considering how we can strengthen them in a proportionate way that gives greater protection particularly to children and, to answer my right hon. Friend’s point, animals, which are often the victims of those guns.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What steps he is taking to tackle the fraudulent use and sale of British passports.

Visit of President Trump: Policing

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

That is certainly not my wish. The comments I have seen from the National Police Chiefs Council make it quite clear that it considers the situation to be unacceptable, and Essex police are working on a better solution.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Just to be clear, I love America and Americans. Indeed, my grandfather was a GI in the second world war. This President is racist, divisive and sexist, and if we were not rolling out the red carpet for him in so many locations, we would not have these costs and pressures on the police. I have a very serious question about far right activity. The President has shared content from a vile fascist organisation whose leaders have now been jailed. What assessment has the Minister made of the potential for far right groups to use the visit as a rallying opportunity?

[Mr Hurd]

The police have made an assessment of all the protests. As I have said, they estimate that there will be more than 100 protests across the country. Their biggest concern, with regard to what they call “spiky activity,” is about two protests in London on Saturday by groups that have different views on the subject. They are managing the risks in the professional way that we would all expect, including by imposing some conditions on the route of the marches in order to keep the protesters separate and reduce the risk of confrontation.

Police Grant Report

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

This is a false argument from the Labour party. The fact remains that when one looks at police funding, on average something like 70% of local police force funding across the system still comes from the centre. The settlement barely changes that. We are responding to calls from many police and crime commissioners for greater flexibility in their local precept. That is what we are delivering but, in the face of continued Labour smoke around police cuts, we cannot get away from the fact that as a result of the settlement, we will invest over £1 billion more in our police system in 2018-19 than we did in 2015-16.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

If everything is so rosy, why do we hear about a very different picture from chief constables and police and crime commissioners in their regular sessions before the Home Affairs Committee? I want to ask the Minister a specific question about funding for capital cities. I have repeatedly asked, as has the South Wales police and crime commissioner, for Cardiff to get additional resources, given its responsibilities as a capital city. Why are the Minister and the Government refusing to do that? Cardiff gets less funding per capita than the west midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester. Given our responsibilities as a capital city, surely that is not right.

[Mr Hurd]

I am happy to sit down with the hon. Gentleman personally to discuss that in more detail. I am not suggesting that everything is rosy in the world of policing, as the police face a very challenging set of circumstances, but I am announcing how we will increase investment in our police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I need to move on to make sure that colleagues—

[Stephen Doughty]

I want to ask about the reserves.

[Mr Hurd]

There will be another opportunity to talk about the reserves later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

I have already taken a great many interventions from Labour Members, and I need to make some progress to allow the debate to flow.

Of course, the No. 1 responsibility of Governments is the safety of our citizens. The tragedy of five terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in 2017 has sadly reinforced the threat that we face from terrorism. It is therefore right that we are increasing funding for counter-terrorism policing both this year and next¸ and it is disappointing that Labour Members will vote against that tonight. In September we announced £24 million of new money this year, which would go to forces throughout the country to meet the costs relating to the tragic terror attacks. I am also pleased to confirm that the Government have agreed to provide a further £4 million this year to meet the costs arising from the attack at Parsons Green. We are significantly increasing the counter-terrorism policing budget for 2018-19 to £757 million. That is £70 million more than was scheduled, and reflects the priority that we attach to the incredibly important task of protecting the public.

As well as increasing funding by around £450 million in 2018-19, we have signalled—and I think this is the first time we have done so in the context of police grants—that we are prepared to protect Government grant and repeat the additional precept flexibility in 2019-20. That is a response to the calls from many PCCs and budget-holders for more forward visibility to help them to plan more effectively. We have made it clear that the 2019-20 local police settlement will depend on progress made by forces this year in three critical areas: productivity, financial efficiency and transparency about financial reserves, which we discussed earlier. All those need to be improved.

[Stephen Doughty]

South Wales police are already doing all those things. We have reduced the reserves to the minimum level allowed. We have collaborated hugely on bringing services together. Seven contact and control rooms have been reduced to one, and 18 custody facilities have been reduced to four. Our command unit structure has been streamlined, we have reduced the estate by a third, and we have reduced the fleet by 20%. The bottom line is that, with demand going up, we have reduced the reserves and made all those efficiency savings. Now the Minister is offering a flat-terms settlement, which is a cut. Where else do we go?

[Mr Hurd]

What I am actually offering is £6.7 million of additional cash investment in South Wales policing next year. I have taken on board everything that the hon. Gentleman has said, and I congratulate the leadership of South Wales police on what it has done to improve efficiency. The level of the reserves is not extravagant. Where I take umbrage with the hon. Gentleman is on the amount of investment, which, as I have said, will rise by £6.7 million next year. I hope he will welcome that.

Improved productivity means making better use of the most important asset in the police system, which is police officers’ time. In 2018, in the modern age, that means making the most of the opportunity presented by digital and big data technology. For example, a growing number of forces—not least Lincolnshire, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—now embrace mobile working. If all forces took advantage of mobile working like the best forces, that would mean that the average officer could spend an hour a day extra on the frontline, where hard-working officers want to be. It has the potential to free up the equivalent of 11,000 extra officers in England and Wales. That is the implication if best practice is extrapolated across the system.

More mobile working, better use of data and better connected systems are all critical to modern policing. That is why the Home Office is working closely with PCCs, chiefs and experts to shape a credible roadmap that can properly harness the power of digital technology to promote more effective policing. To give further support to that process of reform, we have ensured that police forces will benefit from the £175 million police transformation fund in 2018-2019. The fund, led by police, is delivering real results and enabling forces to invest in transformation and digitisation for the future.

When budgets are tight, we have to keep challenging inefficiency, so the Home Office is also working with the police leadership to develop plans to unlock an estimated £120 million-worth of efficiency savings from more collaborative procurement and shared systems. Finally, on behalf of the taxpayer we are pressing PCCs to provide much better information on how they are using their £1.6 billion of financial reserves to improve services to the public. These reserves have risen by over £250 million since 2011. It is public money and the public deserve a proper explanation for how it is going to be used. That is why last week we published comparable national data on police reserves and new tougher guidance on the information PCCs must publish on their planned use of reserves. This is the shape of our proposed police funding settlement out to 2020.

What has been the reaction on the ground? Many PCCs have welcomed the funding settlement we set out in December. I am pleased to say that almost all PCCs in England have chosen to use this new council tax flexibility to determine how much local funding they can raise to deliver for their communities, and local people have shown their support. In Cumbria, 1,500 people responded to the consultation and over 70% of them indicated that they support the proposed precept increase. In Leicestershire, nearly three quarters of respondents voted for a £12 increase, and in Lancashire 78% supported increasing the police precept there by £12.

PCCs have been explaining to their communities why they have opted to make use of this ability to raise the extra funding. Most PCCs are intending to use this funding to protect or strengthen frontline policing in their force next year. For example, Matthew Scott, the PCC for Kent, announced that he will recruit up to 200 additional police officers next year, taking the total number of officers in Kent to its highest level since 2012. In Surrey, the PCC, David Munro, has proposed increasing the precept by £12 to protect local policing teams and respond to increasing threats such as cyber-crime and child abuse, while investing in efficiency programmes to give Surrey a police force fit for the future. In Humberside, PCC Keith Hunter has stated that by increasing the precept by £12 a month the force’s recruitment plans will take them from the planned 1,867 police officers next year up to 1,925 officers by 2020.

Policing

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Nick Hurd

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I wholly endorse my right hon. Friend’s praise for the work of Olivia Pinkney, as the chief of Hampshire. The short answer to her question is that it is the local police and crime commissioner who is accountable for how resource is allocated. If it is the local view that more resources need to go into frontline police officers, that is something the police and crime commissioner has to respond to. Our duty is to make sure that police forces have the resources we think they need to do the job. How those resources are allocated at a local level is the responsibility of the democratically accountable police and crime commissioner.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

What an extraordinary exercise in spin. The statement says very clearly: “We propose that police forces get the same cash from the centre as in 2017-18”, so that is a real-terms cut from the centre. Will the Minister explain, given the additional pressures on South Wales police politically—with Cardiff being a capital city, and the pressures that that places on police in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan—whether we will be getting any additional support?

[Mr Hurd]

I hesitate to correct the hon. Gentleman, but I am afraid that, once those on the Labour Benches take a bit more time to understand how the police settlement actually works, they will know that the flat-cash settlement is a combination of precept and the grant from the centre. Taking those in combination, local police forces are going to move from a situation of flat cash to flat real. That is a significant change. If the hon. Gentleman bothers to go and talk to his local PCC, which I am sure he will, the PCC will explain it to him.