Police Funding, Crime and Community Safety

Debate between Andy Burnham and Dawn Butler

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The Government are cutting the police at national level, making local people in the west midlands—and in Greater Manchester too—pick up the bill, but people are getting less in terms of police on their streets. We know, do we not, that the Government are very good at making cuts in urban areas such as Greater Manchester and the west midlands and at taking money elsewhere. That is the reality: our constituents will be paying more for less. The Chancellor and the Home Secretary have broken their police promise to our constituents.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Talking about cuts, we have lost 108 police officers and 104 PCSOs in my constituency since 2010. The only increase we have seen has been in voluntary special constables—and that was 98. The Government are trying to police using volunteers, not police officers.

[Andy Burnham]

I will come to that as well. The Bill we will debate in a week or so is all about having a part-time police force to deal with the growing threat we face from online crime and fraud and from terror. That is simply not an answer to the challenges of the future, and I will come to that before I finish.

Policing

Debate between Andy Burnham and Dawn Butler

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I do not think that they do. Cuts on the scale proposed would mean the effective end of neighbourhood policing as we have seen it in recent years, particularly in rural areas and areas of lower risk. We would see thousands of bobbies taken off the beat. It would take us back to the bad old days of reactive and remote policing, with officers retreating to cars and to the station. They will not be out on the streets or visible in their communities.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

The safer neighbourhood teams were started in Stonebridge in my constituency of Brent. They helped to build trust in the police and to lower crimes. We have had a 62% cut in our neighbourhood teams. Again, that is a false economy by the Government. There will be more crimes and fewer police to deal with them.

[Andy Burnham]

False economy is absolutely the point, is it not? The Government do not seem to equate the reduction in crime we had in the last decade, which began under our Government, with the investment in those community safety teams. That brings me to the role of police community support officers, one of the innovations of the Labour Government of which I, for one, am very proud indeed. Under the Government’s plans, they will become an endangered species. We know that they do not enjoy the same employment protection as warranted officers, so no doubt they are worried that they will be the first to go.

One of the gains brought about by PCSOs was that they substituted for warranted officers on lower level duties, such as managing the Remembrance Sunday parades we will see in our constituencies this weekend. Around the country, some of those parades are beginning to be scaled back and even cancelled because there is not sufficient police cover. Is it not a sure sign to the Conservatives that if the police can no longer cover events of such importance to our local communities their cuts have already gone too far?