Police

David Winnick Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

HMIC’s assessment was that 4,100 of the 4,600 officers who went in the first year were from front-line jobs, according to the definition of front line that HMIC agreed with the Home Office. The hon. Gentleman also raises an important issue about people nearing retirement, and he will know that in practice chief constables in many parts of the country have been forced to push officers into early retirement when they did not want to go. A Staffordshire officer whom I am meeting tomorrow has said, “I would not have finished. I am not bitter, but very disappointed. The feeling is that there is no control over the mass exodus of experience—it is just going.” That is the reality of what is happening in forces across the country.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

A number of very experienced officers in the West Midlands force have been told that they must leave, having completed their 30 years. Is it not important to bear in mind, however, what happened in August? Time and again during the terrible days of the riots, people were complaining that even with police numbers as they are there were not enough police around. They were pleading with the police to come in. If these cuts take place, if—unfortunately and tragically—we had riots once again, the situation will, as we know, be even worse.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We saw in the capital and major cities across the country that we needed police officers on the streets to take back the streets, calm the riots and prevent the damage that was being done, and it took 16,000 officers on the streets of London to calm the tensions and deal with the violence and the looting. Sixteen thousand officers is the number that this Government are cutting—the equivalent of every one of those police officers that it took to calm the streets of London on those awful August nights.