Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

As my hon. Friend knows, we prioritise counter-terrorism funding to policing, and it has received a measure of protection in the funding settlement. We will, of course, continue to prioritise it.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice is having a busy and rather stressful afternoon. I was hoping to ask the Home Secretary about police funding and numbers—and it looked like he thought that she would answer this question too. In any case, may I ask him about the Home Secretary’s Cabinet-level spending negotiations? I hope that she has filled him in on what went on. This week, the cross-party association of police officers wrote to the Home Office to ask for the spending review settlement for the police—20% front-end loaded cuts, followed by 6% next year and 8% the year after—to be reopened in order to

“avoid long term damage to policing capability”

and to protect the front line. Back in May, the Prime Minister told the BBC:

“Any Cabinet minister…who comes to me and says ‘here are my plans and they involve front line reductions’ will be sent back to their department to go away and think again.”

If the Prime Minister has not told the Home Secretary to go away and think again, will she listen to police chiefs up and down the country urging her to do just that?

[Nick Herbert]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman was referring to the Association of Police Authorities. The House might not have heard that he told the Home Affairs Committee seminar in Cannock on 22 November that this is a tighter environment for police spending and would be under any Government. He admitted that there would be cuts in police spending. We inherited £44 billion of unspecified spending cuts from his Government, and we are having to deal with the deficit, taking the decisions that he has forced upon us.

[Ed Balls]

The deputy to the Home Secretary will have to do a lot better than that. These cuts are front-end loaded and go well beyond the 12% over four years that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said was do-able. I am pleased that he has not repeated the 11% smear against our police, which he knows is a completely corrupt and erroneous statistic. Hon. Members should look at the numbers. In north Wales, 230 officers are to go; in the west midlands, 1,100; and in Greater Manchester, 1,387. The chief constable of Greater Manchester police said that

“there will be a reduction in frontline police officer numbers”.

The Home Secretary was not willing to stand up for the police in the spending review, and she is not willing either to stand up in the House and answer my questions on the police. She can refuse to answer my questions, but she cannot refuse to answer the questions from police officers and the public all around the country. Today—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must have a one-sentence question.

[Ed Balls]

I call on the Home Secretary to listen to police chiefs and the public, and I demand that her spending settlement be reopened, that there is an end to front-end loading and that there is a better deal for the police.

[Nick Herbert]

First, may I say that I am absolutely astonished by the right hon. Gentleman’s attack on the figure of only 11% of total police strength being visible and available to the public at any one time? That was the finding of a report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, and if he takes issue with it, perhaps he will speak to the inspectorate. I think it is disgraceful that he should attack the figure in that way. The report stated:

“The fact is that general availability, in which we include neighbourhood policing and response, is relatively low.”

The right hon. Gentleman also quoted the chief constable of Greater Manchester police. In announcing the changes that he was making to the force, the chief constable said that

“the end result will be more resources put into frontline policing and a more efficient and effective service for the people of Greater Manchester.”

Instead of scaremongering in this way, and instead of attacking the correction that we are having to make, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will accept responsibility for bequeathing the deficit to this country that has meant that we have had to deal with public expenditure.