Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I do not accept that there will be degradation of service in Greater Manchester, and I do not believe that the chief constable would either. He has talked about the fact that the headquarters’ staff in his force got too big and about the savings that can be achieved. As we have said, there are many innovative ways for the police to make contact with their communities that do not necessarily involve an attachment to old buildings. Forces around the country are sharing community centres and shop premises, increasing the contact time that they have with the public as a result. The number of visits to police stations can be very low.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary says that she is saving 1,200 police officer posts by cutting red tape, but we know that 12,000 police officers are being axed across the country. Of the six measures to cut bureaucracy, one has not been taken up by the national statistician and four are pilots. Is not the real truth that the scale and pace of the cuts is slashing front-line policing, not red tape, as we know in Warwickshire? What will be the administrative saving in this financial year as we see the deepest front-loaded front-line cuts?

[Nick Herbert]

I have said that the package of measures that we announced recently would save another 2.5 million hours of officer time, equivalent to 1,200 police officer posts, and we will go further with, for instance, more efficiencies in the criminal justice system. We will take no lectures from the Opposition about bureaucracy. It was they who tied up the police in this red tape with their targets, directions, policing pledge and constant interference, and it has fallen on this Government to reduce that bureaucracy and ensure that police officers can be crime fighters, not form writers.