Police Reform White Paper

Chris Philp Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement—especially after her busy weekend chairing the national executive committee, which excluded Andy Burnham from returning to Parliament. Anyway, the Home Secretary’s statement—[Interruption.] There seems to be some concern from the Benches behind her on that.

The Home Secretary’s statement is striking for what it does not say, because there was no mention—not one word—of her plans for total police officer numbers. The reason for that is simple: total police officer numbers are falling under this Labour Government, as figures due for release later this week will confirm. The last recruitment intake before the election was in March 2024, and there were 149,769 officers in post—the highest number in this country’s history. By the same time the following year, under Labour officer numbers had fallen by over a thousand, and in the current financial year, numbers are falling even further, with the Met alone saying that it will lose a staggering 1,500 officers this financial year.

On officer numbers, the Government are engaged in a con trick. They are transferring officers away from crime investigation, 999 response and other teams into neighbourhood teams, so they can say neighbourhood numbers are going modestly up. But total police officer numbers are falling, so there will be fewer 999 response and investigation officers, response times will be slower and investigations will not be as effective. The Home Secretary can set targets and make announcements, but the fact is she is presiding over falling total police numbers and the public will be less safe as a result.

The Home Secretary has said that she will change the structure of policing. Briefings over the weekend said the reorganisation will be complete in—I had to double check this—2034, nearly a decade away. But we have a crime crisis today. Shoplifting and phone theft are surging under this Government, with shoplifting now at its highest level ever. Knife crime in London is up by 80% under Mayor Sadiq Khan. Women are being let down, too, with sex crimes up by 9%, rape up by 6%, stalking up by 5% and harassment up by 6% under this Labour Government. That requires action today, not in 2034.

The Home Secretary’s plan includes mandating the merger of police forces. Briefings over the weekend suggest a reduction from 43 down to 10 or 12, so a single police force might cover an area from Dover to Milton Keynes or from Penzance to Swindon. Such huge forces will be remote from the communities they serve, and resources will be drawn away from villages and towns towards large cities. The biggest force in the country is the Met, and yet it has the worst crime clear-up rate of any force; it fails to solve 95% of reported crimes. That goes to show that large scale does not automatically deliver better results, and therefore we will oppose the mandated merger of county forces into remote regional mega-forces.

Police forces are warning that Labour’s early prisoner release scheme means more crime and more demands on policing. Most criminals will now be released after serving just one third of their prison sentence, and even rapists will serve only half of theirs. To make things even worse, Labour plans to abolish prison sentences of under one year, so even the most prolific shoplifters will never face jail. That is a recipe for disaster, cooked up by the Home Secretary in her previous role.

We can agree on some things, because the Home Secretary has copied them from us. I am glad that she is continuing the roll-out of artificial intelligence and live facial recognition started under the previous Government —we fully support that. It is right for Home Secretaries to have greater powers to intervene; we announced that policy at our conference last year, and of course we support it. She now says that she will abolish non-crime hate incidents. We need to see the details, but might she explain why Labour voted against that measure when we tabled it as an amendment just last year?

The simple fact is this: total police officer numbers are falling under this Home Secretary’s watch. As a result, 999 response times and crime investigations will suffer. Shoplifting, phone-snatching and sex offences are all rising under this Government. Regional mega-forces will make things worse, not better. Her grand plans will not even be fully implemented until 2034, but action is needed today. These announcements will not make our streets safer this year or next year, and the public will see that rapidly.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Dear me! I will take no lectures on policing from the Conservatives. They had 14 years in government and delivered no meaningful change beyond decimating neighbourhood policing, introducing the failed experiment of police and crime commissioners, and sweeping away meaningful targets to hold our police forces to account.

The shadow Home Secretary complains about non-crime hate incidents. Pray tell, who was in government when they were brought in? He talks about the powers of the Home Secretary. Which Government got rid of them? It was the Conservatives—and not once in all their time in opposition since the general election have they had the gumption to apologise from the Dispatch Box for their appalling track record on policing. Conservative policies saw police numbers slashed by 20,000. They very hastily tried to reverse that measure by bringing back another 20,000 officers, but they did so in a distorted way that meant that 12,000 of those warranted police officers were doing desk jobs. I ask him to read the detail of the White Paper and reconsider whether he wants to stand against everything in it. He cannot possibly believe it a good idea for warranted police officers to do desk jobs; he cannot possibly think it fine for 250 of those officers to be in human resources and 200 in admin support. I cannot believe that even he, with all his lack of attention to detail, thinks that that is a good idea.

I urge the shadow Home Secretary and his Back Benchers to reconsider whether they will stand against the policies unveiled in the White Paper. I urge him to look again carefully at regional police forces. He will have looked at the White Paper, so he knows full well that the regional forces will have local police areas that can concentrate on policing local communities right down to the neighbourhood level. The only reason I am bringing in this new model of policing is to protect neighbourhood policing, which was decimated on the Conservative party’s watch. If he wants to stand against local police areas focused on local communities, and against regional forces dedicated to specialist investigation to ensure that rape and murder cases benefit from exactly the same high standards of service across the country, more fool him. Those measures will result in a better policing model for everyone across our country.

The shadow Home Secretary raises the example of the Met. One thing that Louise Casey found in her 2023 report was that the Met’s national responsibility for counter-terrorism policing—it does counter-terror for everyone across the UK—distracts from its policing of London. These reforms will mean that counter-terror policing, and all other national policing requirements, will sit with the National Police Service, so that the Met and every other force in the country can focus on policing their local areas. I cannot believe that he wants to stand against reforms that deliver better local policing, but that appears to be where the Conservatives are at.