Police Funding

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), in whose constituency I seem to remember voters recently switched from Labour to Conservative in a local government by-election, which is interesting. She is right that there are many challenges in policing, but there are also lots of positive things happening across many areas of crime and policing.

It is good news that crimes that are traditionally measured by the independent crime survey for England and Wales are down by over a third since June 2010. Interestingly, there has been a 15% decrease in computer-related consumer and retail fraud. I pick that out because it shows that police reform is working in this and many other areas to deal with modern, fast-changing crimes, making families and communities safer as a result. It is an example of our police forces making a difference online, behind closed doors, and of why the effectiveness of the police can no longer be measured simply by the number of bobbies on the beat.

We have protected police spending in real terms to ensure that the police have the resources they need to keep us all safe. We are also clear that the police must continue to reform and look at ways to improve efficiency. However, it is not just funding and efficiency savings that are important for a well run police service. It is also about ensuring that local communities receive a service that meets their local needs. Whether tackling rural crime in the countryside or antisocial behaviour in our town centres, police forces need to respond to local need. That is why we have put local communities in charge of local policing, so that police can do what is right for their areas. Locally elected police and crime commissioners are responsible for writing local policing plans, setting the budget, setting the priorities, and hiring and firing the chief constable.

The ability of PCCs to increase their band D precept by up to £12 next year without the need to call a referendum gives them the flexibility to increase their funding by up to £270 million. Opposition Members talk about funding, as they do for absolutely everything, but I am fairly certain that the capital gains tax that they want to fund their proposals with is paying for all sorts of other promises that we have already heard, so I have yet to hear a genuine alternative. Nor do they seem to grasp that all funding comes from taxpayers, whether local or national, and they fail to mention, for example, the huge reduction in income tax for those same taxpayers under this Government.

In my constituency of Mansfield there are ongoing problems with antisocial behaviour, theft and violent crime, on which we need further support and emphasis. With that in mind, I welcome the fact that Nottinghamshire police will receive a 2.4% cash increase in its direct resource funding in the next financial year and that it is recruiting 200 new officers and bringing back officers in schools, which is an example of good practice. Perhaps Opposition Members should note that the Nottinghamshire police and crime commissioner has welcomed the police settlement and the positive impact that it will have in Nottinghamshire.

As well as protecting budgets, the Government have been proactively responding to the changing nature of criminal offences. I welcome plans to tackle offensive and dangerous weapons by restricting the online sale of knives and banning the sale of acid to under-18s. When the Home Secretary visited Mansfield, she spoke to my local officers about their challenges in addressing antisocial behaviour, particularly among under-18s, and officers asked her perhaps to go away and look at their powers to deal with those issues. I hope she took that away and tried to come up with some appropriate answers.

Crime is changing all the time, and the way that the police respond to it has to change as well. It is good news that £1.9 billion is being invested in the national cyber-security strategy to help to counter the cyber-threats that the UK faces increasingly regularly. The National Crime Agency’s budget has also been protected, and new capital investment of over £200 million will be provided to transform the agency into a world-leading law enforcement organisation, with new digital and investigative capability to tackle cyber-crime, child exploitation and the distribution of criminal finances, which is so important in the current international climate.

Protecting women and girls from violence and supporting victims is of the utmost importance. To support the Government’s commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, we have pledged £100 million of increased funding to 2020. Of course, forces must also respond to the increased terrorism threat. It is not just London that faces this; with the horrific attack in Manchester last year and counter-terrorism operations taking place across the entire country, it is important that all our police forces build on their counter-terrorism work. I recall that even the Idlewells shopping centre in Sutton in Ashfield was recently evacuated because of a suspicious package, so all forces have to be vigilant.

When it comes to counter-terror funding, the police grant report announced that the counter-terrorism policing budget will go up by 7%, increasing from £707 million to at least £757 million in 2018-19. We are funding a 15% increase in the numbers of intelligence officers, so that we can better respond to terror threats. We have made funding available to train an additional 1,900 intelligence officers at MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Policing and the policing budget are not simply about how many police officers we have on the ground at any one time. The counter-terrorism strategy is being updated to ensure that the police and security services also have all the powers they need. On a more local level, the Government passed legislation recently to allow police and crime commissioners to look at the powers they give to people in their communities, including PCSOs, and to try to make them more effective locally.

I had much more to say, but I will finish by saying that, as a son of a police officer and coming from a family of police officers, I am incredibly proud of the work that the police do and I fully support the action that the Government are taking.