Police Grant Report

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

It is up to police and crime commissioners how to spend the money in this record funding settlement. Some police forces are being creative by, for example, co-locating with fire stations. Good police and crime commissioners avoided closing police stations. For example, the former Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, managed to largely avoid police station closures—closures that his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, had planned, and that his successor, Sadiq Khan, has in some cases carried out, or at least threatened to carry out. In the west midlands, the current Labour police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, is planning to close 20 police stations. There are ways of avoiding that by better managing the budgets. There is a record funding settlement here. These are choices made locally, and they are often avoidable.

We are also providing £1 billion for national policing priorities and capabilities, including various forms of technology, new national databases and so on. It is important that we continue to use technology to innovate. That includes investing heavily in such things as robotic process automation, which saves a lot of manual work. I mentioned automated redaction tools. Facial recognition can be used retrospectively, to identify suspects who have committed an offence and whose picture has been caught by CCTV, and used live, to spot people who are wanted by police, for example when they walk down a high street or through a train station.

In recent weeks, we have been deploying live facial recognition technology in my south London borough of Croydon. People who were wanted for rape, grievous bodily harm, drug offences, or failing to attend court have been caught wandering down the street. Our local superintendent thinks that, over about 10 deployments on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in central Croydon between December and January, the police will end up arresting about 100 people who are wanted for really serious offences or did not turn up at court. Those people would otherwise never have been arrested. Again, Members should ask their local PCC and chief constable what they are doing with retrospective and live facial recognition. Those technologies can catch dangerous criminals who would otherwise go undetected. It is a really important area.

We continue to invest in various crime programmes. I mentioned violence reduction units and hotspot patrolling. Project ADDER—addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery—continues, dealing with drugs, and the safer streets fund continues as well. We also continue to fund counter-terrorism policing at around £1 billion per year, in addition to our support for ROCUs—regional organised crime units—of around £25 million per year. This is record police funding. It is going up by more than inflation as far as police and crime commissioners are concerned. We hit record police numbers last year. Crime overall is 56% lower than in 2010, and is continuing to fall. There is, of course, more work to do, but we are here to fund and back the police, and to keep our constituents safe. That is what this financial settlement does.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call the next Member to speak, I should clarify something. As the House will have noted, the Order Paper notes that the police grant report and the local government finance instruments have not yet been considered by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. I have now been informed that the Committee met a short time ago. It has considered the instruments and has not drawn them to the attention of the House. To interpret what I have just said for the sake of anyone listening, that means that we can proceed as normal and do not have to take any further steps that we were not already planning to take.