Police: Reduction in Numbers

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the reduction in the number of police officers.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, what matters is front-line services—that is, how effective the police are at fighting crime. The Government are clear that the effectiveness of a police force depends not on overall numbers but on how well it deploys its resources.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

That is an interesting but slightly disappointing response from the Minister. Can I give him an example of the impact of these cuts? Twenty police stations in Essex, 28 in Hampshire and a staggering 34 in Devon and Cornwall are no longer open to the public. Across the country, we are losing police officers—500 in Sussex, 438 in south Yorkshire and more than 1,900 in the Met. I would never argue against any cuts.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

That has been the Labour Party position consistently. We are not against cuts. But even the HMIC and the Audit Commission warned of dangers of cuts in the police of more than12%. The Government are cutting around 20%. What evidence is there that cutting so much above 12% would not lead to an increase in crime victims, and what estimate can the noble Lord give of any increase or decrease in crime in the next 12 months?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for at last saying that she and her colleagues are not arguing against making any cuts. The noble Baroness will accept that we inherited the toughest fiscal challenge in living memory and therefore we had to make cuts—cuts that the noble Baroness’s own party would have made in the unlikely event that it had won the election. We have been clear that it is necessary to make cuts and that there is no simple link between officer numbers and crime levels. We want to make sure that we get the right people in the right place at the right time in the front line, doing the right job.