Police

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Bob Blackman

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. The ducking and diving from Ministers shows how out of touch they are with what is happening in police forces and communities across the country. Communities know what is happening, because they can see it. Police officers are being taken off the front line and the number of uniformed officers working in custody suites, for example, has gone up, not down. In Birmingham, uniformed officers have been taken off the front line in order to monitor CCTV and, in Leeds, police officers are having to go back into the station between incidents to type up their own case notes because the support staff have gone. Whereas those officers would previously have been able to move from incident to incident, rapidly responding, they are now having to go back into the office to do paperwork instead.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady has played strongly on the fact that 16,000 police officers are leaving, with 4,000 leaving, as she claims, in the past year. How many were past retirement age and could therefore choose to go and how many were on active duty, as opposed to light duty in police stations, in which case they would not have been available for police commanders to use in proper policing?

[Yvette Cooper]

HMIC’s assessment was that 4,100 of the 4,600 officers who went in the first year were from front-line jobs, according to the definition of front line that HMIC agreed with the Home Office. The hon. Gentleman also raises an important issue about people nearing retirement, and he will know that in practice chief constables in many parts of the country have been forced to push officers into early retirement when they did not want to go. A Staffordshire officer whom I am meeting tomorrow has said, “I would not have finished. I am not bitter, but very disappointed. The feeling is that there is no control over the mass exodus of experience—it is just going.” That is the reality of what is happening in forces across the country.