Police Funding

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am pleased to speak in this debate. I congratulate the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), on her excellent contribution.

There is no doubt that this is one of the most important matters facing my constituents, and one that is raised time and again. In fact, the very first issue that I raised in the House after my election in June last year was the effect of police cuts across Merseyside and the urgent need to tackle the rising tide of gun crime following a dramatic increase in shootings across Walton and around Merseyside. All that, against the backdrop of savage cuts to police funding, with £100 million slashed from Merseyside police budgets and the loss of more than 1,000 police officers and more than 200 police community support officers since 2010.

On that day, I saw a Government refusing to face up to the consequences of their cuts. Standing here now, nine months down the line, it feels a bit like groundhog day. Just last week, there was another shooting in Everton in my constituency, leaving a 40-year-old man in a critical condition. Since last year, the stark reality of police cuts has further unravelled, with shocking figures showing the biggest increase in recorded crime for a decade. In Merseyside, crime is up 14% on the previous year; there has been a 16% rise in violent crime; possession of a weapon is up 22%; robbery is up 29%; and burglary is up by a third. Those figures are borne out by the stories, often tragic, that we see and hear about on an almost daily basis.

During my time in the House, I have heard, time and again, a Prime Minister who refuses to take responsibility. The first responsibility of any Government should be to keep our people safe, but this Government seem to have little regard for the people of Liverpool.

Last week, the Prime Minister was called out by the UK Statistics Authority, which ruled that the public had been misled by the claim of £450 million in extra funding for local forces. What was dressed up as “extra funding” was, in fact, shifting the burden onto local residents through increases in council tax. As always, poorer areas will be left struggling, with far less ability to raise money locally than the better-off areas where crime is often lower. How can that be fair?

In reality, real-terms funding will be cut for the eighth consecutive year, but, more than anything, people would simply like to see the Prime Minister take seriously the impact of police cuts and rising crime on our communities and to take responsibility, because the denials that we have heard from Conservative Members have, quite frankly, been shameful. The Government have consistently denied not only the figures, but the testimony of frontline police officers and chiefs. Merseyside Chief Constable Andy Cooke has warned that cuts have left the force stretched to the limits, and we still have to find a further £18 million more in cuts by 2020.

A recent bid was made to the Home Office for additional funding to be made available to address the specific rise in gun crime—and that was not the first time. Ministers might admit that they raised hopes only to dash them. Andy Cooke has described it thus:

“The police alone cannot tackle gun crime. The causes are deep rooted in society and in order to reduce it requires all relevant agencies to work together and I am fully aware that all those agencies have been subject to draconian budget cuts also.”

I want to pay tribute to Andy and all of his team and to our police officers on the frontline in Merseyside. It saddens me that this Government are content to ignore their calls for help. In fact, this Government treat our frontline workers with contempt. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that frontline staff know their profession better than a party that has, I am afraid, shown disregard for the reality of working people’s lives since it took office.

As well as police cuts, other cuts to public services are clearly contributing to rising crime. Early intervention, outreach programmes, youth centres and the probation service have all fallen victim to the swinging axe of austerity. Labour has promised to begin to reverse years of Tory neglect by putting 10,000 more police officers back on the beat, but we are much more ambitious than that. As in health, so too in crime, prevention is better than cure. A Labour Government will invest in our communities, rebuilding the social fabric that has ruthlessly been stripped away by austerity. By dealing with inequality and its social consequences, we can tackle the causes of crime at the root, keep our communities safe, and build a more cohesive society based on mutual trust and respect.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I listened with interest to the Minister who introduced the debate and to the speeches from Conservative Members. Members on the Labour Benches were told that we do not understand the complexity of the issues. We were told that we do not care about efficiency. We were told that we are looking backward. Above all, the Minister said we were waving shrouds.

Let me explain to the Minister that I have represented one of the high-crime areas of our great cities for 30 years. None of us wants to make these speeches about the effect of crime in our communities, and yes, Minister, violent crime is going up: knife crime, gun crime, acid attacks, the county lines system of drug distribution. But crime is not just brutal for the victims of crime—it is brutal to whole communities: mothers who see their young sons disappear down a vortex of violence and crime, and wonder, when they go out, if they will return. We are not waving shrouds: we are talking about the reality of life as it is lived by the people we live among and seek to represent.

I want to say a few words about reserves, which Ministers sometimes bring up as the answer to money problems in police funding. They know full well that most of the reserves they refer to are earmarked or allocated reserves. The funds they refer to have overwhelmingly been allocated for specific purposes. These reserves are just not available for day-to-day funding. Just as important, they should not be used for day-to-day funding. Ongoing and recurring costs should not be met from the finite stock of reserves. That is the way to losses, to deficits, to crises—the types of issues, deficits and crises this Government have created elsewhere in the public sector, most damagingly in the NHS. The reserves are needed, and it would not be prudent or even lawful to run them down to zero.

On precepts, I do not want to remind Ministers of their reprimand by the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, but it is simply not the case that they can include money from the council tax precept and treat it or talk about it as if it is direct funding from Government. It is not. It is simply not clear to Labour Members why Conservative Members persist in using that line when the Prime Minister has already been reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority. Let me remind Ministers of the Home Office press release in December 2017. The headline was “Police funding increases by £450 million in 2018”, but the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, questioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), said:

“the Prime Minister’s statement and the Home Office’s tweet could have led the public to conclude incorrectly that central government is providing an additional £450 million for police spending”.

He went on to suggest that the Home Office head of statistics made sure that his colleague statisticians understood the structure of police funding and the importance of making clear public statements. I hope that the Minister will assure me that this has happened.

[Dan Carden]

One criticism that Ministers have made is that we have focused our remarks on resources, but are chief constables themselves not telling us that they need resources? The key example is gun crime in Liverpool. Merseyside police have the experience and the expertise, but they need the resources.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will come to what chief constables all over the country are saying later in my speech. In his statement on police funding on 31 January, the Minister stated:

“In 2018-19, we will provide each police and crime commissioner (PCC) with the same amount of core Government grant funding as in 2017-18.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 25WS.]

He said “the same amount”, but it is a freeze in direct Government funding. When inflation is close to 3%, it amounts to a cut in real terms, because the flat-cash settlement does not cover the unfunded pay rise, pension costs, the apprenticeship levy and rising fuel costs. To say blithely that it is the same amount, as though it is not actually a cut in real terms, is quite disappointing.

I want to say a few words on counter-terrorism and to make the point that Ministers sometimes do not want to talk about—that counter-terrorism and community policing are inextricably linked. As somebody reminded us earlier, it was Sadiq Khan who said:

“For every £1 of counter terrorism funding spent in response to an incident, around £2 is spent on necessary additional non-counter terrorism activity, which has to come from wider policing budgets.”

Community policemen and women are on the frontline of counter-terrorism, so to talk about narrowly defined counter-terrorism funding and not understand that community policing on the ground is the frontline of counter-terrorism is, again, disappointing.

The effects of these cuts on the ground have been set out by my colleagues my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Ruth George), for Redcar (Anna Turley) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), and my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq)—who made a very moving speech—for Leigh (Jo Platt), for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya). They talked from personal experience, but in closing, let me remind Ministers what senior officers have said.

The assistant chief constable from Northumbria, Ged Noble, recently told the police and crime panel that total crime in his area had risen by 109% since 2014 and violent crime was up by over 200%. The Bedfordshire chief constable said:

“We do not have the resources to keep residents safe.”