Police

Alan Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

I will get to the details, because some Members are actually genuinely interested in police funding, rather than in trying to score party political points. I owe it to them to treat them seriously, so let me turn to the funding settlement details.

In the past 12 months we have heard from policing partners on a number of funding issues, including the police allocation formula, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), the process of damping and the community safety fund. There is a widely held view that the police allocation formula should be subject to a full review before any changes are made to the current damping policy. We will commence a review later this year. In the meantime, the current damping arrangements will remain, but a review will be undertaken on whether we can improve the allocation of central police funding.

Linked to the issue of allocation is the precept—the police element of council tax. Of course, I recognise that there is considerable disparity between force areas in the proportion of overall funding that comes from council tax, but we have to ensure that funding allocations to the police are as equitable as they can be. This is why all forces have received an equal percentage of the reduction in core Government funding.

On community safety funding, in 2013-14 police and crime commissioners will receive funding from a new and un-ring fenced transitional community safety fund, which they can use to invest in tackling drugs and crime or in community safety activities. In 2013-14, that funding will total £90 million. PCCs will have discretion to invest funding from the CSF in their own locally determined community safety priorities, including in existing programmes. This fund provides PCCs with the full flexibility to invest in their own priorities. To ensure that PCCs are able to make an informed decision about how to use their CSF allocations, we will publish details on the Home Office website of the existing drugs, crime and community safety funding streams that are ending. From 2014-15, the CSF will be rolled into the police main grant to give PCCs even greater freedom and flexibility over how they use their resources.

In summary, we cannot afford to continue the borrowing-fuelled levels of spending under the previous Government. The fact that crime continues to fall shows that the quality of policing cannot, and should not, be measured purely in terms of the level of resources put into it.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

In Northumbria, the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable are proposing to increase the precept on average by less than 5p per household to recruit 50 additional officers. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that?

[Mr Browne]

That is their decision. That is what they were elected in Northumbria to decide. There seems to be a lot of good news in Northumbria. Let me see, the hon. Gentleman is one of the best parts of the whole country—no wonder he did not intervene earlier. In the two years since his party was chucked out of office with one of its lowest shares of the vote ever and our coalition came in, crime has fallen by 18% in Northumbria. People in Northumbria are safer now than they were before. They are less likely to be victims of crime, and I very much welcome that.