Police

Debate between Aidan Burley and Tom Brake

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Of course he is right, and the Government have based their measures on the HMIC report as well, but people who read and listen to this debate will want to hear exactly what impact HMIC’s recommendations, if implemented, will have on, for example, staff numbers, a point to which the official Opposition’s spokesperson did not respond. She ducked and dived on that point.

The Opposition can pretend that the £40 billion of cuts that they intended making, including 20% cuts throughout Departments, would have gone unnoticed, would have had no impact on front-line services and would have left police forces throughout the country unscathed, but we know, they know and people outside know that that is completely untrue.

There is no point disguising the fact that the settlement is tough. That is true, and it impacts on police budgets. As the Minister said, in 2011-12 there is a 4% reduction in cash terms. In 2012-13, there is a 5% reduction, but, thanks to the HMIC report and the measures that police forces are already taking throughout the country, much of the reduction can be made through greater efficiency.

Police forces are already delivering many examples of such efficiency. In one local example, Sutton and Merton police forces are looking at sharing a custody suite, and if successful in those two force areas, the idea might be rolled out across the whole Met police force area and in others further afield. That is exactly the sort of measure that police forces and police authorities should pursue.

The Minister quite rightly identified what is possible through IT systems savings and, as I said in an intervention, we can derive not only cash savings from that source, but great improvements in efficiency and the likelihood of resolving cases, as the communications problems between different systems are addressed.

One issue that I raised in the previous debate, and on which I hope the Minister has had time to do some work, is training for senior officers. The HMIC report identifies that there was no commonly held belief that those officers needed a detailed understanding of how to ensure that the efficiency savings—the mergers—took place effectively. The Government, HMIC or others might be able to assist with training to ensure that officers are equipped to take such tough decisions, because there are real differences between forces’ proposals.

Some forces are coming forward with a headline figure for the number of officers they are going to cut, while others are coming forward with a range of options—particularly on back-office and procurement—that could identify significant savings without the need to cut staff numbers, which some forces seem to have gone for as the first rather than the last resort.

I want to raise some specific Met issues. The Minister will be aware that the force has not yet taken a decision to cut sergeant numbers by 300; it is considering the idea, but it says it

“will be directed by final analysis and must reflect operational delivery.”

I urge the Met to maintain those officer numbers, but if that is not possible, to look at some of the proposals that I mentioned, particularly on sharing back-office functions, joint custody suites and the like to ensure that the number of police officers in the safer neighbourhood teams is maintained at the level at which it is currently set.

Equally, as I said earlier, safer neighbourhood teams may be undertaking tasks that are not their responsibility. I mentioned the example of drive-outs from petrol stations, which are taking up an inordinate amount of time in the case of at least one of my safer neighbourhood teams. After I raised that case, the local force have asked to meet me to discuss it as a wider issue, so it clearly affects not just one safer neighbourhood team but several in the borough. If a large proportion of their time is spent trying to deal with a problem that the petrol companies should be able to resolve technologically, we should look at the issue carefully to try to free up officer time to concentrate on things that really do need police intervention.

[Mr Burley]

If we want to help the police with their finances, does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps now is the time for premiership football clubs to start thinking about making a greater contribution to the costs of policing their football matches instead of all those police being deployed purely at taxpayers’ expense?

[Tom Brake]

I entirely agree. Given the stringent financial circumstances in which the Government are operating, that is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be considered.

The Minister referred to the review of staffing and overtime arrangements. Although I agree that very high levels of overtime are costly, and that needs to be looked at, such overtime often allows the police to undertake special tasks that they could not do otherwise and can do without the need to grow the number of full-time police officers. This requires some flexibility. Simply saying “No more overtime” would severely constrain some of the activities that the police are undertaking and that people clearly welcome and want to happen.

There are clearly many measures that the police can take to cut back to ensure that they are making the right level of efficiency savings. If the police undertake such actions, which are documented in the HMIC report, and if they look at the best practice that exists in police forces around the country, they can make the savings that they are being required to make without an impact on front-line services.