Police

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I will come to the issue of police numbers, although the previous Home Secretary in the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supported said just before the election that he could not guarantee the number of police officers. One of the points I will be making today is that the Opposition are committed to reductions in spending that mean they too would produce a situation in which police forces were losing officers—the question is how forces adapt to that. Anyway, I do not think we should just play the straightforward numbers game.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Does the Minister share my confusion about the fact that when police numbers in my police force in Humberside were cut by 137 in 2009 under the Labour Government, not a single Labour politician, local council or local MP criticised those cuts? Instead, they defended them, saying, “It’s not about numbers; it’s about what you do with your police officers.” Does my right hon. Friend think that is a bit weird?

[Nick Herbert]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is certainly true that we do not hear much of that from the Labour party now. Some 27 police forces were reducing police numbers at the time of the last election, but that is not frequently admitted by the Opposition.

One-off funding will additionally be provided to the Mayor’s office for policing and crime in 2012 from outside the police spending review settlement. That payment will help to maintain the operational capabilities of the Metropolitan police while they are policing the Olympics, the Paralympics, WorldPride and Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee celebrations. It will help to maintain resilience during this unique period and, crucially, it comes on top of the police spending review settlement, which means that no police force will see its funding reduced as a result.

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[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. This is happening from Merseyside to Norfolk and Gloucestershire; it is happening right across the country. We have been warning that the Government should reopen the funding formula for not only the Met, but other forces across the country, because the Minister’s plans are doing nothing for those other forces, which are facing those pressures. We have to wonder what the chief constables in other parts of the country have to do to get a break. Do they have to put on a blonde wig, jump on a bike and become a struggling Tory candidate to get the money they need? The Home Secretary should be more concerned about public safety than about the safety of Boris Johnson. This is a con for Londoners, it is a rip-off for the rest of the country and it is pork barrel politics at its worst.

[Andrew Percy]

The shadow Secretary of State will, as ever, wish to be honest with the House. If she were Secretary of State today, would she be coming to his House to cut the budget for Humberside police, in my area—yes or no?

[Yvette Cooper]

As we made clear, we believe that the force should have a 12% cut over the course of the Parliament. So, yes, forces would face reductions and would have to make savings, but that figure has been supported by chief constables across the country, by work done by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and by work that the former Home Secretary did before the election. That is why we think that ours is a reasonable approach to take, as opposed to making the deepest cuts in police funding seen for a generation—cuts of 8% in one year alone and cuts of 20% altogether. The hon. Gentleman’s local force is losing 500 police officers as a result of his Government’s plans. Will he be putting that on his election leaflet?

[Andrew Percy]

Does the shadow Secretary of State therefore agree that it may be seen as a little dishonest of local Labour politicians, who did not oppose police cuts in Humberside in 2009, under a Labour Government, to be on the streets now campaigning against police cuts, given that she has just admitted to the House that if she were Secretary of State she would be cutting my local police force today?

[Yvette Cooper]

Let us, again, be clear that Labour would not be cutting by 20%—we do not think that that is right. We think that the Government are going too far, too fast. They are hitting the economy and pushing it into reverse, but they are also hitting policing. The hon. Gentleman did not say whether he would be putting the cut of 500 police officers on his election leaflet, but I can tell him that we will be putting it on ours.

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[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Speaking as a former special adviser to the Home Secretary at the time of the Sheehy reforms in the 1990s and as a shadow police Minister in the previous Parliament, I think it is worth putting on record that policing is about leadership and that leadership from the top at the Home Office has indeed been supplied by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and her deputy, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice. They have shown a great deal of skill in negotiating a very difficult settlement for the police. The Winsor review has been an important contribution to getting more for less from the police budget. One does not have to talk up the Home Secretary’s book on this; the facts are quite clear. Part 1 of Winsor, which went to arbitration, has gone through with the support now of the Police Federation, and that is no mean feat.

I shall not spend too much time rebutting the number crunching of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). Even her own party accepts that there must be constraints on public spending, and that extends to the police force. Why? Because as a result of the economic crash in the previous Parliament, this country is now spending £120 million a day on debt interest alone. That cannot go on and public spending control is something that any responsible Government would have to put in place. The police force and the public understand that stark fact. I have yet to meet a police officer or a constituent who thinks the country can afford significant real-terms increases in police services.

On the total Government grants before us today, we see that the reduction in Government funding including specific grant allocations will be 4% in 2011-12 and 5% in 2012-13. They will be lower in 2013-14 at 2% and lower still in 2014-15 with a 1% reduction. Across local government there has been a reduction in the amount of funding allocated to specific grants, and some of the specific grants that police authorities have historically been used to receiving, such as the crime fighting fund and the basic command unit fund, have been absorbed into the police main grant.

Let us not forget that real-terms gross revenue had increased every year from 1996-97 to 2007-08. Those were very big sustained year-on-year increases. Sadly, they were spending increases that were allocated when we did not have the money on a sustainable basis. It was a boom time in the economy and the previous Government were spending money that they did not have.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend refers to the increases in spending in central Government grant, but does he recognise that much of the increase in spending locally came directly from local taxpayers through massive increases in the police precept—in my area 500% over the course of the previous Government—and that, similarly, is not sustainable and fair on local people?

[Mr Ruffley]

Council tax as a proportion of the total police spend that all police authorities have will be about a quarter for 2011. It was half that—12%—in 2001-02, so the statistics bear out the experience that my hon. Friend has had in his police authority.

Returning to the historical increases, there was another interesting statistic that the Home Affairs Committee calculated. Between 2000 and 2008 the real-terms increase in total police spending was a whacking 20%, so I suggest, and I am sure Government Members would agree, that the police are looking at historically high real-terms spending figures over the past 10 years, compared with what they have ever had in the past. The shadow Policing Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position. Does he want to intervene?

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[Andrew Percy]

The shadow Home Secretary’s local chief constable at the time of the riots said that the issue was not about numbers, and he went on local TV to say that he had no issue with numbers and had, in fact, got enough numbers to “invade a small country”. Those were his exact words, on Yorkshire TV.

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

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[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

This has been an entertaining and enlightening debate. I apologise for having to leave it for a short period to attend a lobby.

I have listened to the debate with great interest. My gast has been flabbered on occasion as I heard Labour Back Benchers criticising police cuts, while the shadow Secretary of State confirmed in response to my question that she would cut my police force were she Home Secretary today. She also said that she would cut the police force of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and every force in the country, with the possible exception of London—although she criticised extra funding for London, she also appeared to support it.

I was staggered to hear some of the things that Labour Members said, for precisely the reason I highlighted when I intervened on the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice. In 2009, police numbers in my police force—Humberside—fell by 137. As I said, we saw not a single Labour politician criticising that reduction on the streets or in the newspapers. In fact, they made the case for reducing those numbers by stating that reducing numbers did not necessarily mean reducing the impact of front-line policing. Labour Members now have the audacity to go out on the streets in parts of my area—although not in my constituency—gathering signatures for a petition against police cuts. I suspect the petition is not quite so honest as to say, “We do not support the Government’s cuts, but we support the Opposition’s cuts of at least 12%.”

[Tony Lloyd]

Did the hon. Gentleman campaign for or against the police cuts in the previous Parliament?

[Andrew Percy]

I was obviously not a Member of the House in the previous Parliament, but I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at my voting record on police motions since I have been a Member.

[Tony Lloyd]

With respect, I asked whether the hon. Gentleman campaigned for or against those cuts. He was outside the House, but he was a candidate.

[Andrew Percy]

I spent 10 years as a local authority councillor, representing an area in the city of Hull where there was a huge increase in antisocial behaviour. I spent most of my time campaigning to get more police on the streets. My primary concern throughout was visible, effective policing. I suspect that we—my constituents in my council ward and I—never obsessed about total numbers; we obsessed about getting people on to the streets to fight crime. I have the same obsession today.

I note the bizarre position of Labour politicians. They oppose cuts but have confirmed in the House that they would significantly cut the policing budget. They were also very supportive of cuts before the election. In the run-up to the general election, the probation service in Humberside had its budget cut by 20%, but not a single Labour politician was on the streets in Brigg and Goole or elsewhere in Humberside to criticise that. Perhaps—heaven forbid—people say one thing in government and another when they are in opposition.

On the previous Labour Government’s record on policing, I was intrigued by the intervention of the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who spoke of those glory days of policing in North Yorkshire. The beauty of being a born-and-bred Yorkshireman—I have lived there all my life—is that I remember seeing on television, during those Labour years, North Yorkshire police force condemning its traffic officers and vehicles to the yards because it did not have enough money to pay for diesel.

[Mr Hanson]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will happily give way to the shadow Minister—he can tell us whether he is in line with the shadow Home Secretary on freezing police pay, because the House is entertained by that spat.

[Mr Hanson]

Will the hon. Gentleman check the facts when he goes to the Library of the House after this debate? He will find that there were 126,000 police officers in 1997 and 144,000 to 145,000 in 2010, which is an increase of about 20,000 police officers on the beat and on the streets. He will also find that there was a reduction in crime of 43% over the period.

[Andrew Percy]

I am disappointed that the shadow Minister did not take that opportunity to explain why the same Labour politicians who now criticise police cuts in Humberside failed to utter a word in 2009 about the reduction in numbers. I will gladly give way again if he wishes to explain that to the House and my constituents, who I am sure are watching.

I turn to the record of policing and the crime figures, which people often bandy around. I am a cynic when it comes to crime figures because I think that what people see on the ground is different from recorded crime, although I note that I used to criticise crime figures while in opposition and that the Labour party is now criticising this Government’s crime figures—so perhaps we are all guilty of flip-flopping on this matter.

Nevertheless, I recall that when I was a local councillor trying to deal with a significant increase in the number of recorded cases of antisocial behaviour, police precepts in Humberside rose by 500%, and our local police force spent lots of money building police stations for its so-called neighbourhood policing agenda before abandoning or having to find alternative uses for them after changing their minds again.

I also recall £6 million of Humberside’s policing budget being spent on policing overtime, despite the huge waiting list of people wishing to be specials. I remember chairing the licensing committee when 24-hour drinking came in and seeing the huge impact that it had on city centre drinking in the city of Hull, as it was known then. No resources were provided for that.

I also recall a huge amount of central control. Despite what was said about policing numbers, in the area that I represented and in many rural areas of Humberside, across east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, under diktats from central Government, policing resources were drawn into Hull city centre and other town centres, at the insistence of the Home Office, in order to deal with volume crime. That left communities such as mine with no police cover during evenings and weekends.

I question whether these increases in police numbers resulted in an increase in the numbers of front-line officers. Perhaps it is a generational thing, but people always say to me, “You never see a police officer on the street.” People said that 10 years ago when I started as a councillor, but perhaps they said the same thing 10 years before. Perceptions vary, however, so I note that Labour’s record on policing and crime might not be quite as presented by some Opposition Members.

It is interesting that the shadow Home Secretary confirmed that she would cut police budgets across the country. That might be some welcome honesty in the politics of the Opposition—we do not often hear much clarity on their budgetary policies. Nevertheless, she admitted that she would cut the policing budget significantly, so we all seem to agree that we cannot continue to invest the same amount of money as we have in the past three years, and that we must find another way forward.

As the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice made clear, people need to work more closely together. Over the past 10 years in one east Yorkshire community, a new fire station, a new ambulance station and a new police station have been built—nobly, perhaps—but with public money and in isolation from each other, with all the extra costs that that entails. I meet with some resistance when I talk to the police, because although they talk about wanting to work together more closely, it is always with other police forces. I am not sure that they fully understand the need to work together more closely with other emergency services and local authorities.

It always struck me as a bit bonkers that we had a chief executive for the fire authority, a chief executive for the police authority and different financial officers. Surely those back-office costs could be merged. My chief constable, Tim Hollis, is an excellent chief constable and I support a lot of his work in Humberside, but although he is open to working together more closely, it concerns me a little that that seems to be about working with other police forces, because there are real opportunities to engage with local authorities in order to reduce some of these costs.

Local authorities have a role as well. One of the two local authorities that I represent, North Lincolnshire council, which, as Members will remember, was the only council to go from Labour control to Conservative control last May—thanks to all the gains in Brigg and Goole—is considering using some of the council’s budget to support community policing across my area in order to meet the policing challenges. Admittedly, that is not new—for several years from 2000, despite the apparently fantastic settlement from the Labour Government at the time, the Labour council in Hull still felt the need to put £1 million of council tax payers’ money into policing. Therefore, there is a role for local authorities.

We have a choice. We can stand up and do the cheap politics, while also wanting to cut the police budget significantly, or we can try to find local solutions. I would love it if we could pepper money around all over the shop and put police officers on every street corner—we would all like that to a lesser or greater extent—but in reality policing budgets are under pressure, so we can either moan from the sidelines or we can engage with our local police forces and local councils, and have them come up with solutions and ways of doing things smarter and more cheaply, and, if necessary, use some of the additional resources. Local authorities employ thousands of people, and there is the potential for working together more closely than has been the case, although I accept it happens in some areas. That will be the challenge for us all as we move forward.

We might not like the position that we are in, but we know why we are in it, although I have not felt the need to remind the House of it. We have to be grown-up about this. What concerns me most is that by making cheap politics out of it, people are undermining confidence in policing, which we all know is very important.