Police Grant Report

Debate between Esther McVey and Sarah Jones

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Knife murders have fallen by 27% and knife crime has fallen by 8%—there were nearly 4,500 fewer knife offences in the past year than in the year before that. We are focused on outcomes. The right hon. Gentleman will know that proper police reform involves looking at the staff, the workforce and new technology. He is a big fan of live facial recognition, as are we, and we are taking out of the system inefficiencies to the tune of £350 million during this Parliament. Money was being wasted by the previous Government, but we will strip those inefficiencies out of the system. Our reforms will focus on outcomes, and on delivering a local police force that will tackle the epidemic of everyday crime and a national police service that will tackle complex crime.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I apologise for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of this debate, because I have a debate in Westminster Hall, but I need to ask the Minister a question. She talks about outcomes. Is she as shocked as I am that the Labour Cheshire police and crime commissioner has already spent £200,000 on two listening exercises, and is expected to spend another £400,000 on more listening exercises? The precept is going up by 6.7%, but the police force will have to make redundancies. Does she not agree that the money should go not on vanity projects, but on frontline policing?

[Sarah Jones]

I suggest that the previous Government would have benefited from listening to the public. There is no harm in listening to the public. Indeed, it is our role as elected representatives to do so. One challenge that we are grappling with through the police reform White Paper is how we make sure that there is accountability at the hyper-local and national levels. We need to make sure that we listen to our constituents and target the crimes that they care about.

[Esther McVey]

Following on from the Minister’s point, I noticed today that the same Labour police and crime commissioner has put up an advert for a senior public relations officer on £45,000 to £55,000, and there are other vanity projects. Surely that money should be spent on PCSOs and police on the ground, not on the PCC himself.

[Sarah Jones]

I do not know whether the right hon. Lady has anybody in her team to help her with communications.

[Esther McVey]

indicated dissent.

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[Sarah Jones]

Nobody? I suspect that she does have somebody who helps with communications; most hon. Members in this place do.

[Esther McVey]

No, I don’t.

[Sarah Jones]

Ensuring the public know what is happening is also a good thing. The right hon. Lady will know that we have said several times in this place that we are abolishing the role of the police and crime commissioner. That is not in any way because of the work that they have done. Indeed, they have done a lot of brilliant work. I have some fantastic colleagues that I will continue to work with until 2028.

[Esther McVey]

On a point of clarification—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

I will make some progress, I am afraid.

Many hon. Members have talked about the funding formula. In opposition, I regularly called on the previous Government to review the funding formula. As part of this reform journey, we will have to reform the formula, because we are changing the structures. I can reassure Members that we will do that. This year’s settlement represents a first step in our reform journey. We have streamlined the way that we distribute funding and have put flexibility back into the hands of police chiefs, allowing them to focus on the priorities of their communities and of this Government.

One of those priorities has to be neighbourhood policing, as it is the bedrock of the British policing model. A central aim of this Government’s agenda has been to restore neighbourhood policing after it was catastrophically eroded in the years before the general election. Our efforts are already having an impact; there are nearly 2,400 more neighbourhood officers already in our communities, and the neighbourhood policing guarantee is delivering named, contactable officers in every area, but we must and will go further. Through this settlement, we will build on the progress made so far.

Having listened to feedback from police chiefs, police and crime commissioners, Select Committees and His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services and others, we are removing arbitrary headcount targets for overall officer numbers. We believe that success should be judged not just by numbers, but by how the police deliver the outcomes that the public want. Our focus is on putting police where they can make the most difference, which is often in our communities, tackling the crime and antisocial behaviour that blights cities, towns and villages. We are therefore ringfencing £363 million of funding to get 1,750 more police officers and police and community support officers into neighbourhood policing roles in the next year.

[Esther McVey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Jones]

I will carry on making some progress.

Through the continued growth in neighbourhood policing, we will restore the vital link between police forces and the communities they serve. We also believe that there is significant potential to revolutionise police efficiency and productivity. We are continuing to work with forces through the efficiency programme towards the target I mentioned earlier of £354 million of cashable savings by the end of this Parliament. As set out in our White Paper, we must explore further avenues to bring policing into the modern age and deliver better value. Meanwhile, new structures will remove duplication and the national police service will allow us to deal with the biggest threats nationally. This Government believe in doing things right once, not in 43 different ways, and not a single penny of taxpayers’ money should be wasted. By investing in new technology, taking away administrative burdens and moving officers out from desks and into our communities, we move closer to that goal.

In 2026-27, we are continuing to invest in the police, supporting them with a record level of funding to do what they do best: keeping us all safe. That is the first duty of Government.

[Esther McVey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Jones]

I will not on this occasion.

Keeping us all safe requires a highly effective and efficient police service that is both equipped for the crime-fighting challenges of now and prepared for the future.

Ultimately,

“the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.”

Not my words, but one of Robert Peel’s principles of policing, as laid out almost 200 years ago. Those principles are just as relevant today. We believe that policing should be about keeping people safe. The visible presence of police officers on our streets is vital, and this settlement aims to get officers away from desks and back on the frontline.

[Esther McVey]

I thank the Minister for giving way; it is most generous of her. My chief constable has raised a point about Labour’s new Sentencing Act 2026, where criminals will not be sentenced for less than 12 months. My chief constable says that their force will now be man-marking criminals on the street, which will cost them approximately £1.6 million a year. Can the Minister explain how she plans to address that issue in costs and man hours?

[Sarah Jones]

Significant investment is going into probation alongside those reforms. As the right hon. Lady would expect, colleagues in the Home Office and I are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to ensure we are equipped to respond to any changes. It is absolutely true that it is often right for people to have non-prison sentences, whether that is tagging or other punishments. We can do some innovative work on that going forward, but we are having regular meetings with our police colleagues to make sure we are ready for the changes.

Equally, we cannot forget the staff essential to our policing system, such as the PCSOs working with vulnerable individuals, victim support staff helping people through the aftermath of crimes, or tech experts working in police headquarters to track stolen phones. This settlement recognises that and puts power back in the hands of local forces, allowing them to prioritise the right mix of skills for a modern workforce. We are giving the police the resources—up to £18.4 billion—to invest in this workforce and to supply them with the tools and powers they need to do their jobs.

We know that to people across England and Wales, what matters most is not what we say but what we do. We are backing up our words with action—restoring neighbourhood policing, driving down harmful threats and equipping forces for the challenges of modern crime fighting—but we will not stop there. We will maintain momentum this year and beyond, reforming policing and striving to give law-abiding citizens the safety and security they deserve. This settlement will aid us in delivering those aims, and I commend it to the House.

Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Debate between Esther McVey and Sarah Jones

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones]

And indeed there are other male Members here. I am getting myself into trouble before I have even started.

This is an important issue, and we have said that men are affected by it. Yesterday, I was reading in the Evening Standard about people being drugged in a club and having vast amounts of money stolen from them, so spiking is also used as a means to steal, but it still largely affects women. Stamp Out Spiking says that four out of five victims are women.

This crime has historically been dismissed, although it has been around for years. As has been said, it is often seen as the fault of the victim for going out, having too much fun and drinking too much. The stigma that attaches to that means that lots of people do not come forward. Spiking happens because of criminals. It is a violent act with damaging physical and mental health consequences. Women and men should be able to go about their business and enjoy their nights out without fear. It is pernicious and a route to further criminality, be it acquisitive crime, robbery, sexual assault or, in some cases, rape.

We need leadership on this issue. The hon. Member for Gloucester, the Home Affairs Committee and Members on both sides of the House are calling on the Government to act, and move further faster. Just shy of 5,000 cases were reported in the 12 months to September 2022, but as has been said, there is massive under-reporting; many people do not come forward. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said, the majority of people who came forward in her Committee’s consultation did not report anything to the police. That lack of confidence in authorities—that pessimism that nothing will be done—is a real problem, so I ask the Minister, following on from the Select Committee’s recommendations, what more work the Government can do to improve the reporting of spiking, and to support victims in coming forward.

The lack of a specific offence is obviously the main topic that we have been talking about. Last year, Labour added to calls for the Government to introduce a specific offence of spiking and intent to spike. We tabled an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill calling for urgent action, and a review of the prevalence of spiking and the criminal justice system’s response to it. The Government sadly did not agree to it.

The Government could commit today to referring spiking sentencing to the Sentencing Council. Analysis of how many prosecutions occur is very difficult because we do not have all the figures, but there were only 36 prosecutions and 20 convictions over 2020 for what is called “other miscellaneous sexual offences”, of which spiking is one category. In the 10 years to 2020, there were only 286 convictions under that offence. Only three people were prosecuted under section 23 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 in 2020, and there were only 104 section 24 offences of administering poison with intent to injure or annoy. There is a wide range of offences that spiking can fall under. It is complicated. As the hon. Member for Gloucester argues, we should call a spade a spade and introduce a specific offence for spiking.

There is good work being done across the country on this. I went to the west midlands and walked about Birmingham with PCC Simon Foster, who is doing some really good work. West Midlands police have a system in which they attend all allegations, and triage victims in Birmingham safe space areas, which are staffed by security and medics throughout the night. Drugs screening is prioritised, and urine samples are taken within 72 hours. The speed with which those drugs leave our bodies makes evidence gathering far harder, but the police react with a speed that keeps up with that.

In Northumbria, Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness has placed dedicated officers on patrol in Newcastle’s bustling night-time economy, which I enjoyed when I was at Durham University. They are there to protect individuals and target those who commit offences. We have talked about the Ask Angela scheme in places such as Leeds; more than 650 night-time economy providers have signed up to those scheme, through which those who feel unsafe, vulnerable or threatened can seek help discretely by approaching staff and asking for Angela.

While spiking is a horrid and invasive crime, it is just one of the threats to women engaging with the night-time economy. All too often, bouncers throw out young women, or young people, because they are too drunk, with little care for their safety, when in reality they are under the influence of something that was slipped into their drink. Even when they are leaving because they have had too much to drink, they are still vulnerable and need support. There is some really good work around the country that I would like the Government to look at rolling out. For example, if someone leaves a nightclub in Birmingham, there are lots of phone numbers that the bouncers and others can use to get someone from St John’s Ambulance to come and make sure that person gets home safely. That is simple but really effective.

There is a great epidemic of violence against women and girls in this country. Spiking, as a violent act, in many cases is based on misogyny and lack of respect. When done with a needle, it involves a weapon, too. The Labour party has repeatedly pushed the Government to go further, faster, on violence against women and girls. Labour has produced a comprehensive violence against women and girls White Paper, setting out our vision of a Britain that is safe for women and girls. We have consistently called for VAWG to be part of the strategic policing requirement that has been promised by the Government but not delivered. Police forces are not yet required to tackle crimes against women as a priority. That is unforgiveable, and yet another example of a Tory Government refusing to take concrete action to protect women.

Following on from the Select Committee recommendations, what work are the Government doing to improve reporting of spiking? Will the Minister accept the arguments for making spiking a specific offence? Will he go further on violence against women more broadly, not least by making it a specific strategic requirement?

Yesterday, I was in a youth centre in Croydon, and as always there were a range of leaflets there. I picked one up, and it said, “Keep an eye on your drink. You won’t know your drink has been spiked until it is too late, so be careful.” It can no longer be solely the duty of our women and girls to keep themselves safe. After years of neglect in this area, the Government must step up and take action.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

The Minister should be mindful to leave two minutes for a winding-up speech.