Police Grant Report

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that intervention. I do not think that it is revelatory—indeed, we will decades if not a century and a half’s worth of precedent—that central Government fund policing in this country. What I am saying is that, year on year, the share provided by the local ratepayer is increasing, and this is a continuation of that. It is legitimate to ask whether that is the best funding model. I will get to the funding formula shortly, but, as I say, that differential impact is not a serious way to bring down crime rates across the country.

To add insult to injury, the Minister says in his written statement:

“When setting their budgets, PCCs should be mindful of the cost of living pressures that householders are facing.”

Are the Government for real? Given the Minister’s role in the previous Government, and given the Government’s indifference to the challenges that people across the UK face, that is front beyond imagination. Telling our PCCs that they should be mindful? I say, “Physician, heal thyself.” The public will not be taken for fools by the Government, though. Just as, when they open their mortgage statements, they know what has happened, when they open their council tax bill, it will tell them all they need to know.

I turn now to the funding formula, which other colleagues have raised. Countless Ministers, including this Minister, have stood at the Dispatch Box or answered written questions over the years, pledging to do something about a system that is badly overdue for renewal. Members across the House have been raising this for many years with the Government. In December, the Treasury informed the Public Accounts Committee that a new formula would be introduced as soon as possible. In January, the Minister said, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), that he would update the House on work to update the formula

“as soon as I can.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 569.]

Yet, two weeks ago, we saw in the press that the can is to be kicked down the road again, because No. 10 is worried about police funding cuts in a general election year.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

I start by expressing my thanks for the fantastic work undertaken by local police officers right across Bedfordshire. However, with the Conservatives’ own police and crime commissioner agreeing that the current unfair funding formula leaves no meat on the bone at all for local police, does my hon. Friend agree that it is police officers and local residents who are being let down by inaction on this issue, and that Ministers owe it to them to live up to their previous commitment to ensure that a fair formula is delivered within this Parliament?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that contribution from my hon. Friend. Yes, I think the public would expect not only that the formulas reflect the need across the country, but that when promises are made repeatedly over multiple years, those promises are kept; even if the upshot was difficult political questions, the Government ought to rise above that. Instead, it just looks as though they are trying to dodge responsibility. I hope the Minister will be clear in his summing-up about the status of that formula. Has No. 10 Downing Street told him to put it on hold? If not, when will it be announced? The public deserve to know.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (First sitting)

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Maclean]

Thank you so much for clarifying that.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

Q I could not agree more about the challenges you set out around people finding new ways to extort homeowners and the moves towards charging for the maintenance of public space. In my constituency of Mid Bedfordshire, many estates suffer from this issue. Mr Fuller will have similar ones on his estates in North East Bedfordshire. I completely agree that it feels shocking for lots of people that they are essentially paying twice for services: once for council tax and once for a charge that they have little control over and where there is often little guarantee of good services.

There are many estates in my patch where you can literally see where it becomes private because the condition of the road is shocking compared to 2 feet away, or the condition of the public space completely deteriorates. What measures would you like to see added to the Bill to help address that? Would you agree that ultimately we need mechanisms to ensure that a stated object can happen in a way that everyone can have confidence in?

Katie Kendrick: In an ideal world, the local authorities would be adopting these areas. I do not think there should be a private management at all. Local authorities used to, and they can charge the builders more for the land at the start.

Cath Williams: I agree.

Katie Kendrick: Adopt the lot.

[Ms Rimmer]

Q Katie, it seems to me that you and your team should be congratulated—you are the agony aunts. Believe you me, people look to these ladies and groups of people as their saviours rather than the Government. Already, leaseholders are saying, “Well, perhaps we can make this peppercorn. If we all go for this peppercorn, perhaps we can work then to get that peppercorn and get in there, and get shut of it that way.” Really, this is the opportunity. We should be listening to them—granted—and I genuinely believe there is listening going on with this Bill.

We have to tie it down and not let the situation become like the one we have seen with the post offices. It is an obstacle course. People have committed suicide. Managers have broken down. Homes have been lost. Jobs have been lost. The management charges are unbelievable, and I do not think people understand that. I have not seen it anywhere, but a leaseholder has to write if they want to change the carpet; they then get charged a couple of hundred pounds for that, they get charged for the answer, and they get charged when somebody comes to have a look at it. That is how it goes on. The management charges are as big a fear as the lease, because leaseholders do not know where they are going.

The Government simply have to step in. It is the biggest money-making racket in this country now—and it is a racket. It is said that people have sat down and designed this system, and we should not leave these people to do the fighting on their own. I genuinely believe that there is desire to do so from both the Minister and our shadow Minister. Please come forward with your thoughts; do not give up. I do not believe for one minute you will give up.

Katie Kendrick: I believe there is political will to do this from across the House; there is unanimous agreement and there is no dispute. If there is no dispute, we just need to get it done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

Individuals will still be able to make a valid contribution in the years ahead, but in a sustainable and managed way. There are no immediate plans to introduce further exemptions to the increased salary threshold, but the salary discounts remain in place. We will continue to engage as the measures are introduced. There are also opportunities domestically for recruitment. At every opportunity, we should be trying to support domestic recruitment wherever we can.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

12. What progress his Department has made on reviewing the police funding formula.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

Work to update the funding formula is continuing, and I will update the House as soon as I can. The House should be aware that next year, 2024-25, police and crime commissioners funding frontline police will see their budgets increase by up to £922 million, which is an increase of about 6%.

[Alistair Strathern]

There is cross-party agreement that the current funding formula is unfair for police in Bedfordshire, with the Conservatives’ own PCC acknowledging that there is simply no meat left on the bone for local police. My constituents are fed up with being told that they have never had it so good, or being fobbed off with one-off grants. Will the Minister commit to a date to finally deliver a fair funding formula for my communities?

[Chris Philp]

What I will commit to, as far as the people of Bedfordshire are concerned, is an increase in funding of £10.2 million for next year, 2024-25. That is an extra 6.5% compared with this year. They will also have 1,455 police officers. That is about 200 more than Bedfordshire’s police force has ever had at any time in its history.

Town Centre Safety

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

Let me start by sharing colleagues’ sentiments on the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris). It is important to continue to have cross-party consensus on the importance of stamping out antisemitism and racism across our streets. I share his horror at some of the examples he brought to the House’s attention.

Members on both sides of the Chamber who had the opportunity to come and visit us in Mid Bedfordshire recently may wonder what I am doing in a debate about town centres. Having spent one or two hours along Long Drive and trying to find that last house at the end of a road group, they may wonder whether they somehow missed the latest Westfield shopping centre at the end of a country lane. In Mid Bedfordshire we may not have anything quite on the scale of Oxford Street, but the town centres and hubs in my 48 towns and villages are no less important. From the fantastic Roger’s Bakery in Meppershall to the Cross Keys pub in Cranfield, those businesses showcase the very best of what a high street should be about: the beating heart of the community where we can all come together. But the heartbreaking reality of much of my campaign was speaking to people who simply do not feel safe on those streets anymore.

The Government keep telling us today that we have never had it so good when it comes to policing in Mid Bedfordshire, but the sad reality for people in my constituency could not feel more different. From Shefford to Wixams and from Wootton to Flitwick, many people just are not feeling safe on their streets. It is easy to see why: shoplifting up 7% and neighbourhood offences up across the county of Bedfordshire, but charging of offences across Bedfordshire down. The result: businesses, customers and communities left feeling vulnerable and exposed. Our high streets might not be on the same scale as those of other Members, but these issues have even greater resonance in my community. Without the networks of support and the visibility that larger high streets can provide, my shop owners, communities and shoppers can feel even more vulnerable when Governments fail to act. That cannot be right and cannot be left unaddressed.

During the campaign, I was incredibly heartened to see some cross-party consensus on this issue, with my rival Conservative party candidate, the local police and crime commissioner no less, conceding that policing in Bedfordshire was underfunded, that more needed to be invested in neighbourhood policing and that new approaches were necessary—with, I hasten to add, very little pressure from me to do so. But since arriving in this place, I am sad to say that I have felt that Labour is the only party with serious answers to these challenges. It should not be rocket science: it is about creating the thousands of extra neighbourhood officers we need to create a visible policing presence on our streets, rooted right across my towns, villages and communities; making sure we are taking retail crime seriously by creating a new offence to give extra protection to shopworkers; ending the floor on offences leading to follow-up for shoplifting; and having a focus on youth centres and provision to ensure our young people have better options available to them than bad choices. Those are the solutions my communities are crying out for, and they should not have to wait for a general election to see them.

This is a Government who, for all their faults— I hasten to add that I might think there are one or two—have not been afraid at times, in their best moments, to take some of the Labour party’s ideas and bring them forward, from aspects of Labour’s NHS workforce plan to getting more investment to our businesses. We welcome that. I urge those on the Government Benches to take this opportunity to add another example to that list. Do not let my communities wait any longer. Do not fall into the temptation of self-indulgence and pre-emptive leadership bids in the last few months of this Parliament. Let us get something done together for our communities and support Labour’s common-sense plan to take our high streets back, keep them safe, and invest to enable the neighbourhood policing my towns and villages are crying out for.