Community Policing: Government Support

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown- Fuller) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to my excellent policemen and women, who do a fantastic job in keeping us safe.

We Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing, and the visible, trusted police presence that it provides for our constituents. During the previous Conservative Government’s programme of cuts, local community policing across our country was torn apart. We have heard from some Government Members who may need educating on the concept of a coalition in which the junior partner makes up 15% of the MPs, and so does not have total control over every Government policy. Since Labour came into government, more than 1,000 officers have been cut from our streets. I am sure that the hike in national insurance contributions has not helped that at all. My force, Devon and Cornwall, has faced a 50% cut to its recruitment budget.

The politicisation of the police service through the introduction of police and crime commissioners has done untold further damage to that trust. I was glad when, in November last year, the Government embraced a long-running Lib Dem campaign by announcing the scrapping of PCCs entirely. That will save the British taxpayer an estimated £100 million a year, £20 million of which can be funnelled into neighbourhood policing.

For rural areas such as my North Cornwall constituency, neighbourhood and community policing focus heavily on tackling the scourge of rural crime. I have prioritised the fight against rural crime on behalf of my constituents by introducing the Rural Crime (Strategy) Bill and consistently pushing the Government to develop a full strategy to address it countrywide. For many countryside communities up and down the country, thefts of farm machinery, tools and livestock can be devastating. At a time when family farms are being hammered by rising costs, a botched sustainable farming incentive payment system, a rise in inheritance tax, bluetongue outbreaks and a severe drought, the loss of just one all-terrain vehicle or expensive piece of farm machinery can set them back tens of thousands of pounds. Sadly, many of my farming constituents have told me that they have altogether lost confidence that such crimes will be dealt with seriously, so they no longer report them.

It is clear that many forces still lack specialists to deal specifically with these types of rural crimes. The Home Office is planning £365,000 of funding for the entire country’s rural crime units, which works out at around £8,500 pounds on average per police force. From my own work on the Home Affairs Committee, I have had the opportunity to quiz officials on police visibility in communities, and specifically on the effectiveness of reopening front desks. I was told by one police official from Buckinghamshire that the reopening of a police station in a town there saw a 19% overall reduction in crime, not just because people reported crimes more, but because it gave the local community a more visible police presence. I have been requesting that Launceston, in my constituency, has its police station’s front desk reopened, but Devon and Cornwall’s police and crime commissioner has refused time and again to do so. That refusal is especially disappointing when the cost is around £100,000 and the cost of suspended Devon and Cornwall police officers is currently around £1.3 million a year.

We have clear opportunity to bring back this policing visibility and confidence, yet the requests of the community are being ignored. One way to ensure that frontline officers are left to focus on the communities they serve is to prevent them from being pulled away for other types of crime that fester online. Our Liberal Democrat proposal is to establish an online crime agency, funded by £250 million per year—a levy on the big tech and AI firms that too often enable this online crime to take place. Our local officers would be freed up and sent back out to our towns and high streets, where they belong, combating thefts, shoplifting and the other types of local crime that hon. Members have mentioned.

Will the Minister commit to ensuring that every community across Britain has a police counter by using spaces such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls and reopening front desks where feasible, and to establishing an online crime agency so that deepfakes, revenge porn and other online crimes are tackled by specialists? Will she also ensure that the proposed police reorganisation does not further reduce community policing, and build on the NPCC rural and wildlife crime strategy, to tackle the scourge of rural crime?