Police Funding, Crime and Community Safety

Debate between Andy Burnham and Stephen Doughty

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The same story is repeated all over the country. I ask my hon. Friend to think about the cuts that have been made to other services alongside the police, such as those to councils, mental health services, social care, disability benefits, ambulance services and fire services. All those cuts pile extra pressure on our overstretched police forces. That is what we are seeing. The cuts now being planned come at a time when this country is facing multiple challenges on many fronts, and when the threat level has never been higher, so something has to give.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a stark contrast with the approach that the Welsh Labour Government are taking, with funding for hundreds of extra PCSOs in Wales making up for the shortfall they have seen as a result of cuts elsewhere?

[Andy Burnham]

I think that people will hear what my hon. Friend has said and make their own judgment. Who protects community safety? Who stands up for the police? When people come to vote this May, there is the evidence that when Labour is in government, when we run councils and when we have Labour police and crime commissioners, we protect front-line and neighbourhood policing and we improve community safety. My hon. Friend makes that point very well.

The question we have to ask the Home Secretary today is this: how many more consecutive years of cuts can police forces take before public safety is seriously compromised? England and Wales already have far fewer police officers per head of population compared with international counterparts. If the ratio drops even lower, there are real fears that were a Paris-style attack to happen here, and, importantly, were it to happen outside London, there would simply not be the ability to surge enough police officers—specifically, fire arms officers and specialist units—on to the streets quickly enough to protect the public.

Policing

Debate between Andy Burnham and Stephen Doughty

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That may well be the case—I do not know, as I have not seen the details. May I gently point out to the hon. and learned Lady, however, that that is not the position everywhere? I refer her to the comments that the chief constable of Lancashire made yesterday before the Home Affairs Committee. He said that if these cuts go through,

“people in Lancashire will not be as safe as they are now”.

The chief constable of Cumbria has said that that force may not be viable, and we face the closure of police stations across the country. Complacency will not serve Conservative Members well in this debate.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

South Wales police force has had a reduction of 600 police officers in the past three years. I have had the privilege of working closely with community teams in my constituency in crucial areas such as counter-terrorism and dealing with extremism. Mark Rowley has made it very clear that uniformed officers on the beat also play a crucial role in that work. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such work is put at risk when cuts are made in police forces across the country?

[Andy Burnham]

That is the point: we are already hearing that police services in England and Wales are overstretched and struggling to cover all their functions. That is because in the past five years 12,000 full-time officers have been lost—the total was about 17,000 police staff overall. Three weeks from now, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be standing at that Dispatch Box announcing his spending review. If he follows through on what he said at the Budget, the country will soon have a very different police force, providing a much-reduced service than the one that has just been described. As it stands, the Home Office, like other unprotected Departments, is in line for a cut over the next five years of between 25% and 40%. If we assume that the Government are working to keep it to the lower end of that spectrum, it still represents a massive hit on resources. It will mean 22,000 fewer police officers than we have today. That is a massive number and the Government need to provide justification for cuts on that scale.