Policing (England and Wales)

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

This has been an interesting and stimulating debate, with some great contributions from both sides of the House. Before I start, I want to thank all hon. Members for the tributes they have paid to our brave police officers across the country.

This has been possibly the most challenging period for UK policing since the second world war. We have been asking police officers to do jobs that we never thought they would have to do in our lifetime, and they have done it with skill, aplomb and courage. The fact that many of them have fallen victim to the virus—indeed, a number have lost their life—is a cause of great sorrow, but I know they will take comfort from the support that hon. Members on both sides of the House have unequivocally given to them this afternoon.

I also express gratitude for the overwhelming revulsion at the increase in assaults on police officers that we have seen over the past few months and the past couple of years. It is something that we are determined to tackle as a Government, and it appears to me that we will have cross-party support for that measure when it comes forward in legislation later this year.

We had a number of good and interesting speeches throughout the debate, and I will address some of the themes that have been raised by hon. Members, rather than individual speeches. First, I want to address a couple of themes pursued by the Opposition Front Benchers and, in fact, by Opposition Members throughout the debate.

First, I want to address an issue raised by the shadow Home Secretary right at the start, when he accused me and the Home Secretary of being “soft on crime”. Well, I do not think that the Home Secretary has ever been accused of being soft on anything, let alone crime. Given my own record of fighting crime in London—I am proud of the contribution that I made—I think that is an unfair accusation. The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) was boasting about Labour’s performance in the crime survey, so she will of course know that, according to the crime survey, overall crime and violent crime is below the level it was in 2010. Although that number has stabilised and we have seen a different pattern—certainly from violence in recorded police crime—if she is judging us on that particular measure, as she is judging her party, she has to accept that crime remains below the 2010 figure. Nevertheless, there are some significant issues that need to be addressed and I will come to those in a moment.

There was a strong theme in Opposition speeches—I note that there was no Liberal Democrat participation, but nevertheless a small number of Labour Members have participated—that was effectively accusing the Government over the last 10 years of somehow cutting police officer numbers or cutting the resources to police as a discretionary choice. In fact, as you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, we were dealing with the consequences of the largest crash that we have seen in this country—indeed, the largest global crash seen since the 1930s. It was a crash brought about by deregulation of the financial services industry largely propelled by, I guess, Labour party dogma in terms of financial services. We have traded this argument many times during the nearly 18 months in which I have been in this job. In fact, it was a debate that was had to a high degree during the campaign in the run-up to the 2019 election.

The British people are smart enough to realise that where the public finances are concerned, we have to cut the cloth accordingly. They recognise that post that crash, we had to do something to get the balance sheet in order, and that required restrictions in expenditure across the whole public sector. To be honest, given what we have had to do during this pandemic to support people across the country and their businesses, thank God we did. If we had not, God knows what parlous state the finances would be in now. As it is, we have been able to get through this as best we can, supporting neighbourhoods, communities and businesses across the country because we rebuilt the balance sheet and rebuilt sound public finances. I make no apology for that at all.

A number of themes were promulgated during the debate, and I will address them in turn. First, my congratulations to the team from Bedfordshire for their pincer manoeuvre. Happily for them, I have recently visited Bedfordshire police and seen for myself the burdens that crime—particularly serious and organised crime—places on that force. I also had a discussion with the chief constable earlier this week about the challenges that that force is facing at the moment. I think I am due to meet my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and residents from Leighton Buzzard quite soon to talk about crime in his area; we will certainly have a look at that.

The key theme raised by a number of Members across the House was the funding formula. I am happy to reiterate the commitment that I have made from this Dispatch Box in the past, which is that we are going to review it this side of the election. I am happy to say that the scoping work has already started in the Home Office. We are hopeful of bringing forward the various steps we have to go through for the funding formula in the future. The hon. Member for Croydon Central is quite right that, as a Back Bencher, I railed against the existing funding formula, not least because of the effect that it has on Hampshire police, but at the moment it remains the most reliable—if slightly elderly—formula that we have for allocating resources, so until we manage to devise a new one, the work for which we will be doing soon, I am afraid that we have to stick with it.

A number of Members quite rightly raised the issue of vaccinations for police officers. As I have said publicly and, indeed, in meetings with the federation and others, both the Home Secretary and I have made the point to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and through Government that police officers face a particular exposure to the virus that we think necessitates their being prioritised once the first four groups have been dealt with. That decision is not in our hands—it sits with the independent committee that makes the decisions about who gets vaccinated—but nevertheless we, along with the federation and others, have made that point strongly.

A number of Members, not least my hon. Friends the Members for West Dorset (Chris Loder) and for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), made representations about county lines and the violence that is being promulgated throughout the country by drugs gangs. We are making enormous strides in confronting those gangs, with 550 county lines closed down in the past 12 months, and we have doubled the money that we are putting into county lines, with a further £20 million being allocated this year and more money going into dealing with serious and organised crime and the upstream effects of drugs.

Over past four or five years, the issue of drugs has become central to crime in this country and, as a Government, we are determined to confront it. I think it is fair to say that every time I speak to the Prime Minister he has an obsession with the impact of drugs in society and wants us to work as hard as we can to roll back the effects of that horrendous industry in our neighbourhoods, towns and cities. Over the next few months, Members will see an even more assertive approach to it.

Let me turn to one or two particular specific themes that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) made an excellent speech touching on several themes that were echoed by a number of other Members. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan), he pointed out that it is not about how big a budget is; it is about what we do with it. Much of that comes down to the collaboration between the police and crime commissioner and the local chief constable. Given that we are approaching an election for police and crime commissioners, it is no surprise that we heard a number of, shall we say, political interventions and speeches, with a view towards that collaboration and helping people to put their cross in the right box.

Police and crime commissioners can have an enormous impact on performance in their area. Alongside the new National Policing Board and the performance board that sits underneath it, we are going to do our best to make sure that it is about not just the budget but the effect, the focus and a drive for change in every single police area throughout the country. I hope people will see that in future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering also raised ANPR as an issue, and, in correspondence to me, a number of Members have previously referred to traffic police and the need to grip the transport network. We believe that is the key to fighting crime.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering—I am privileging him because he is one of the few Members who is actually present—also raised the issue of taser roll-out. He will know that last year we announced £10 million of extra taser funding to allow chiefs to roll tasers out to those who wish to use them. Using a taser is often less impactful, shall we say, and likely to cause less injury than hitting somebody with an ASP, and it provides officers with protection in a way that perhaps other defensive equipment may not. We are keen to see that those officers who want a taser can acquire one to use for their own protection. I hope that when we bring forward in legislation the police covenant, which will contain a commitment from the Government to look towards the safety and wellbeing of police officers, my hon. Friend will support that as enthusiastically as he has offered his support this afternoon.

Finally—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I hear murmuring from the Whips. I had a challenge from a number of Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), about the Government’s commitment to increasing the number of police officers by 20,000 over last year and the next two years. As I said on Monday in Home Office questions, to me that commitment is as strong as the ravens’ to the Tower, and the legend goes that should the ravens ever leave the tower, the kingdom will fall. Our commitment to the 20,000 police officers is about as rock-solid as it gets. If we fail to achieve that target—I am confident that we will—there will obviously be significant implications, not least for me, so we will be working very hard to ensure that, whatever the disposition of police officers over the next two or three years, we get to that 20,000 by the target date.

Finally, Members raised the burden that covid has placed on police forces and the financial cost to them over the last few months. I am happy to say that later this week, we will make further announcements about more money that we will be giving to police forces—we are finalising the figures at the moment—on top of the £30 million that we have given them in the interim. I hope that that means we can round off this year as one of the most generous for policing in the last decade, if not the most generous, and move into a second year that continues the trajectory of growth and performance as we drive down crime across the whole country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2021-22 (HC 1162), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021, statutory instrument No. 97. The Ayes were 526 and the Noes were 24, so the Ayes have it. I will briefly suspend the House in order that the necessary arrangements for the next business can be made.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]