Police Grant Report

Debate between Alex Norris and Imran Hussain

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Our thanks go to police officers, police community support officers and police staff across the country for their work. It can be dangerous, but it is always important. Our communities value it greatly, and it is essential to British life. We are grateful and lucky to have them. I also thank police and crime commissioners. They are 85 days away from the next set of PCC elections. Some will not stand again, some might not be returned, and some will be re-elected. Again, our thanks go to them all for doing a very difficult job, often across huge geographies, representing and stepping up for their communities. As I said, we are lucky to have them.

Police forces across England and Wales are still living with the impact of 14 years of failure by the Government. Rates of serious violence are up, and charge rates are plummeting. I am amazed by what the Minister said about morale among rank and file officers, which we know is at low levels. The loss of staff has been significant in the last year, and it is very strange to hear that that is not a problem. We know that chief constables and police and crime commissioners are grappling with limited resources and trying to deal with the crisis in public confidence, which is frankly disconnected from what the Minister just said. All the while, the real, everyday problems that our constituents see in their communities are getting worse, not better.

We have witnessed a collapse in neighbourhood policing in recent years, with 10,000 fewer officers on the beat. Police forces are still reeling from the years of experience and expertise that were lost when the Government cut police officers by 20,000. Of the new recruits brought in when the Government realised that grave error, an estimated 6,000 officers are not on frontline duty but are instead covering roles that are traditionally done by vital civilian staff. Is it any wonder that 50% of people say that they no longer ever see police on the streets? I ask colleagues whose case better marries up with what their constituents say: the Minister’s or mine. I know the answer.

[Imran Hussain]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. He is right that during the last decade, due to austerity, there have been substantial cuts to neighbourhood policing. In West Yorkshire, we have lost 1,000 neighbourhood police officers. Does he agree that neighbourhood policing is the essential link between the police and our communities? Not only does it increase confidence in policing but it makes the role much easier by preventing antisocial behaviour and in many other ways, because of the bond between the community and the police.

[Alex Norris]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I absolutely share his view. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of policing. A lot of the problems that we are trying to deal with—I will speak about them in a second—have grown and festered because we have given up on neighbourhood policing for well over a decade and have lost control of our streets. Whether it is antisocial behaviour, shoplifting on high streets, the epidemic level of violence and abuse against our retail workers, communities where there is drug dealing in broad daylight, or the horrific levels of knife crime—up 77% since 2015—the experience of our constituents under this Government is that criminals get let off and victims get let down. After 14 years in government—the Minister did not use this in his statistical run-down—over 90% of crimes go unsolved, meaning that criminals are less than half as likely to be caught than they were when the Government took office in 2010. That is the Government’s record on law and order.

The Government and the Minister want us to believe that we have never had it so good, but everywhere we look there are serious problems, which are compounded to a degree by the settlement. This is an unamendable motion about more money for our policing, and of course we will support it, but the detail that sits beneath it deserves serious scrutiny. Colleagues will have seen the dismay across policing at the 6% cash increase, set below the level of the pay award. That is before on-costs, and before inflation. The settlement exacerbates rather than resolves some of the funding challenges. Particularly challenging—the Minister said this himself—is that a third of the settlement is based on the assumption that police and crime commissioners will increase council tax for local ratepayers to the maximum. Yet again we see a shift from central Government funding to local communities for vital everyday services.

As the Minister said, the Government have lifted the cap on the precept so that PCCs can raise it by £13 next year for band D properties. That in itself is a challenge for people’s finances, but it also creates differential challenges across the country, as the money is not then spread equitably. The most deprived areas of our country, which have the fewest higher-banded properties paying higher rates of council tax, get the least return from a local precept. Better-off areas will get more funding because their tax base is higher. That is not levelling up, which I suspect has long since been put in a drawer somewhere, but drives a wedge between different parts of our country when the safety and security of our constituents is at stake. That failure of leadership has consequences for less well-off areas—the parts of the country more likely to suffer from antisocial behaviour, violence, sexual offences or robbery.