Merseyside Police Funding

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the funding of Merseyside Police.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful to my hon. Friends from across Merseyside who have joined us for this Westminster Hall debate this afternoon.

I begin by paying tribute to our Merseyside police officers, police community support officers and police staff, who do a fantastic job in extremely challenging circumstances. Police officers across the country take enormous risks to keep us safe. I pay tribute to our officers for their service. In particular, I thank Andy Cooke, our Merseyside chief constable, and Jane Kennedy, our excellent police and crime commissioner, for their leadership through a tough time.

The police on Merseyside have been struggling with almost a decade of year-on-year real-terms cuts in funding. Since 2010, Merseyside police has been required to make cuts of £110 million. We have seen a cut of one third in the police grant to Merseyside, so it came as no surprise to my constituents last September when the National Audit Office confirmed that Merseyside police is the third worst hit force across England and Wales in terms of cuts in funding. As a consequence of those cuts, we have lost 1,700 staff and police officers since 2010. That translates to one in four—25%—of police officer posts gone. At the same time, Merseyside fire and rescue service has seen its budget cut in half by the Government. Liverpool City Council has faced some of the most savage funding cuts of any local authority.

The impact has been felt in every area of policing. Chief Constable Andy Cooke has warned that Merseyside police is reaching breaking point as budgets are “stretched to the limits”. Of course, the situation is not unique to Merseyside. Last year, the Home Affairs Committee issued a stark warning that policing in this country is at risk of becoming “irrelevant” amid falling staff numbers and rising crime.

The additional £8.4 million in Government grant to Merseyside police for the coming year will be consumed entirely by meeting the pension shortfall. While the additional funding is of course welcome, there is no guarantee that the pension grant will be repeated in future years. When the Minister responds, will she give an assurance that the additional funding, which is welcome, will continue beyond 2020? The settlement provides no new money from Government for the day-to-day running of our police, the cost of which increases every year with inflation, particularly wage inflation. Yet again, our PCC Jane Kennedy has had no alternative but to ask local people to pay more in council tax to keep police on our streets and in our communities.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Clearly on the Wirral, we do not have some of the more dramatic issues that those on the other side of the river have, but does my hon. Friend agree that local taxpayers are asked to fund increases well above inflation, yet there is no extra money for putting frontline officers back on the beat to improve the visibility of the police presence? They are being asked to pay more, yet the service they receive seems to carry on disintegrating.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am sure her constituents say to her as mine do to me that there is that sense of having to make an increased contribution, yet not seeing an improvement in service.

With the increase in precept this year, there will be some new officers, which is very welcome, but it comes after almost a decade of considerable cutbacks. During the consultation on this year’s council tax increase, about three quarters of respondents indicated that they were willing to pay the additional money to protect police officer numbers and to put some extra officers on the beat, so our commissioner took the reluctant—I think—decision to propose an increase in the precept to generate an additional £10 million.

That increase, for most households—most Merseyside households are in band A for council tax—is £16 a year; for a band D property, it is £24 a year. Families across Merseyside, in our constituencies, face tight finances, so that kind of decision taken by local politicians is not one that is taken lightly. In an environment of increasing crime, however, with increasing calls for help from the public, politicians were left with no alternative. We simply cannot afford to lose any more officers, police community support officers or police staff in Merseyside.

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[Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)]

I am not a Merseyside MP, but I grew up there. I pay tribute to Merseyside police, who thankfully I did not cause too much trouble to, but they were always there if required—

[Ms Angela Eagle]

That’s what you say!

[Gillian Keegan]

I think they would probably still say that.

For the record, my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) would like to be present to take part in this debate, but he is on a parliamentary trip to the Falklands with our armed forces. Like me, he voted to increase the funding for all police—as we know, across the country there is a mixed funding model for the police—and for Merseyside police by up to £18 million, we hope.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that many changes are going on in the police force, in particular the access to lots of technology? From going out with my police force, I know that there are a lot of changes, so straight-on comparisons of the amount of resource are difficult, because the whole nature of policing is changing across the country.

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[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I will not repeat the stark figures that my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) put on the record, which show the terrible difficulties the Government’s decisions about police funding have left both the chief constable, Andy Cooke, and our PCC, Jane Kennedy, in over the years. Suffice it to say that we have seen an increase in demand, a rapid acceleration in crime, a significant reduction in the resources to deal with that demand, and a huge reduction in numbers, which has led to the loss of those eyes and ears that all our communities were so used to seeing when the Merseyside force pioneered the introduction of neighbourhood policing.

I do not think anyone in the room—I certainly hope that includes the Minister—would have anything other than praise for the Merseyside force and the individuals who make up the service. Merseyside police regularly outperforms other police forces. It has made huge efficiency savings over the years and was ahead of the curve in that respect, but it appears to have been punished for that by the scale of the cuts it has had to make. Merseyside police feels very much that it has been made to suffer for entering into the spirit of making efficiency savings and transforming the service. The Minister needs to recognise that my hon. Friends and I—some of us more than others—all represent areas of very complex and difficult policing challenges, particularly with organised crime and gangs, the like of which it is rare to see outside the Met.

The Minister will probably make all the usual arguments about how, really, the Government have massively increased resources and everyone should be able to manage with a bit of snipping and efficiency here, there and everywhere. However, the false economies of the cuts to prevention that decisions by the Minister and her Government are forcing on the Merseyside force will come back to haunt us in the not-too-distant future. Because many of the officers who remain are forced to do so much more with far fewer resources, they are becoming overstretched, and that is affecting their ability and capacity to do their job, their enthusiasm for the job and their mental health. Some of them are approaching burn-out, as demonstrated by the review my hon. Friends mentioned.

Aside from storing up trouble for the future, what do the cuts and pressures that the Minister and her Government colleagues are presiding over mean for our communities? What kind of society are my constituents in Wallasey and everyone else in Merseyside expected to put up with? It is one where respect for the law is decreasing rather than increasing; one where communities are cynical about reporting what is going on because they never get an adequate response; one where the police have to make really difficult choices about who to respond to and whether to respond in any meaningful way at all; and one where the wrong incentives are demonstrated day in, day out. It teaches that crime can pay and that the police are so overstretched that they will not arrive and deal with issues, so low-level crime begins to escalate, and that they are beginning to lose control of the streets.

There have been incidents in my constituency, which by some definitions is at the quieter end of the Merseyside area, of thugs arriving at people’s doors and threatening them if they have complained about scrambler bikes and low-level crime. The police have been to visit, and the thugs have come back and threatened members of the household for supporting each other and trying to do the right thing. The fact that the police do not have the resources to follow up makes previously law-abiding citizens, who believed that the police were there to help them, frightened to stay in those areas. They become increasingly cynical about reporting anything because they do not think the police can respond properly, and it makes them really question their values. That is what the Minister and her Government are presiding over by not funding our services properly.

What kind of society are we building if the cuts to the Merseyside force have stretched it to that extent? Given the emergence of county lines problems, no one should think for a minute that the issues that people have to live with in inner-city areas will not spread. They will, and we are now beginning to see them spread down train lines to areas that were previously untouched. We are seeing the increasing exploitation of people by organised gangs for drug purposes and the spread of really bad behaviour, which wreaks havoc in formerly quiet and law-abiding communities. That creates even more difficult problems and provides the wrong incentives.

I urge the Minister to give us some comfort that the Government will not continue unfairly expecting people on council tax band A and in poorer, more deprived areas to pay for the increasing cost of policing in areas that were difficult to start with, but that the Government will take their share of responsibility, step up to the plate and fund the forces of law and order that keep our society safe and secure. That would give people the confidence to plan, to be out on the street, to talk to each other and to have a proper community, rather than cower behind their doors, worried about antisocial behaviour and thuggery, which is spreading. The Minister must assure us that she has heard what we are saying and that her Government will respond in a way that will make a difference. They must reassure us and our constituents that they will fund our police services properly and will not resort to the unfair practice of putting the biggest burden of policing on those who are least able to cope with it.

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[Victoria Atkins]

We have been conscious of the impact that the rule changes would have on constabularies. That was discussed in 2016, I think, and there was an expectation that forces would be able to go some way to ameliorating the increase. Following the conversations that the Policing Minister had with chief constables, we have secured more money from the Treasury to try to cover the majority of that pension increase. I accept that a proportion still falls on local forces, but we have managed to secure some assistance towards the overall cost.

I will ask the Policing Minister to write to the hon. Gentleman about next year. We are working towards the comprehensive spending review and I imagine that the message from this debate and others will be heard loud and clear by the Policing Minister and, importantly, by the Treasury.

I return to the fact that we have tried to increase police funding; last year, we increased it by up to £460 million. Contrary to allegations from Opposition Members, I have always been clear that it has been with the help of police and crime commissioners that we have helped, as a society, to inject that further money into policing.

Similarly, this year, we are injecting up to £970 million more, again with the help of police and crime commissioners. That is why I am pleased that the police and crime commissioner for Merseyside has conducted her consultation, won the support of more than 74% of respondents for her proposals, and can raise council tax by £2 per month on band D households.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Will the Minister recognise, on the record, that by doing things in that way and by bringing local taxpayers into the formula, she is saying to my constituents and the constituents of all hon. Members on this side of the Chamber that people in the poorest areas, who are least able to cope with tax increases, have to pay them because they happen to live in an area with greater demands on policing? Why is that not the national Government’s duty? Why should our constituents have that unfair burden put on them?

[Victoria Atkins]

That is where the hon. Lady and I part in our political philosophy. There is no such thing as Government money; it is taxpayers’ money, collected centrally, that is paid to police constabularies. None the less, we have been careful to protect and increase Government grants where we can.

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[Ms Angela Eagle]

I am sure we could have many a philosophical discussion about what taxpayers’ money is, but that would be for another time. Even with that difference of view, will the Minister not admit that using the council tax system puts a greater burden on the people who are least able to pay, because of the regressive way that council tax is worked out? We have many constituents in band E properties who are, by definition, asset poorer and generally poorer than those in higher council tax bands, but she is suggesting that there should be a redistribution from people in better-off areas to those in poorer areas, who will be forced to pay more. How is that fair?

[Victoria Atkins]

There is still funding from central Government. We are concentrating on the direct funding formula for the force, but there are other ways in which police forces receive money to target particular needs in their communities. For example, with the issue of serious organised crime, which has been raised today, I am delighted that Andy Cooke, the chief constable, is in fact the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on serious organised crime. He brings his expertise to that role.

Through the funding settlement, there is a national grant of £90 million to tackle serious and organised crime. Regarding the local area, I think the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said that there was not a penny being put towards serious organised crime—I hope she will forgive me if I have misquoted her, but it was something along those lines. We are funding a serious organised crime community co-ordinator in Merseyside and Cheshire, as one of five pilot areas with a specific focus, and through this pilot programme we are looking to increase significantly our focus on diverting people away from serious organised crime and on building resilience.

In addition, the North West regional organised crime unit is providing specialist serious organised crime policing capabilities and advice to its six host forces, which include Merseyside. We want very much to help local PCC funding across those forces by supplementing their funding through core grant funding, as we did last year. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood specifically raised the point about cyber-crime. The North West ROCU has been allocated £434,000 of specific funding for cyber protect and prevent officers, and an international standards officer, so there is funding from sources other than the grant.