Police Employer Pension Contributions

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The motion refers to changes to police employer pension contributions. As I was just explaining to the House, in North Yorkshire, as of tomorrow, the fire and rescue authority and the police will be amalgamated, so the fire and rescue service is absolutely pertinent to the debate. I shall therefore continue as I was, Mr Deputy Speaker.

As I have already highlighted, the cost to North Yorkshire police will be £1.6 million in 2019-20 and £4 million in 2020-21. That is on top of the £10 million that is already having to be saved. The police authority was seeking to recruit another 70 police officers but is now having to put that opportunity on hold.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is advancing an important argument, which is that every penny that the police now have to put into increased employer contributions is one penny less that they have to spend on the mental health services and employer support that they have to provide, and on vital community services. Does she agree with my local chief constable in Staffordshire, who has said that cuts like this will not only impact on police numbers, but mean that in some parts of the county the services that he provides in addition to traditional policing will just have to stop?

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Policing is not just about the police service; it is about the wider partnerships that are formed.

Let me return to the point I was making—

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[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I would like to talk about why the police matter; the impact thus far of cuts to the police service; and just how serious the impact will be if this situation continues, particularly when it comes to pension costs.

The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of their citizens. That is a duty that Labour took very seriously while in government. We invested in the police service, with 17,000 extra police officers, 16,000 police community support officers, and the establishment of neighbourhood policing, celebrated worldwide for its effectiveness and much loved by the public, bringing crime down by 43%. We have now seen the dramatic turning of the tide. Under this Government, 21,000 police officers have gone, with crime rapidly rising as a consequence. In the west midlands, 2,100 police officers have gone, and the impact on the public and the police has been catastrophic.

In the Perry Common area of my constituency, fear stalks a certain street. One woman said to me, “I have lived here for 44 years, Jack, but I now cannot go out at night because I fear the consequences.” There has been an outbreak of knife crime and gun crime. In another part of my constituency, Frances Road, there has been a rapid growth of houses in multiple occupation, with the associated crime and antisocial behaviour, transforming a settled community into a place where a mother told me, “Every time my daughter wants to get the bus on Slade Road, I have to take her down there because she fears going out by herself.” There is the impact on a settled, strong community such as Castle Vale, with the outbreak of crime and antisocial behaviour. As ever fewer police officers have been on the beat, the problems have got ever worse. There is also the impact on the Fort shopping area, with a rapid growth in crime and antisocial behaviour.

We will see whether the statement made by the Home Secretary is translated into practical action at the next stages. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said in his brilliant speech, if the Government are saying that they get it, they now need to act on it. What is so extraordinary is that, up until now, the Government have been in complete denial. The current Prime Minister, previously the Home Secretary for the best part of seven years, would say, “We cut police, yes, but we cut crime.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The explosion in crime all over Britain is deeply worrying, as is the progressive hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing. At the heart of this debate are the concerns being expressed by the West Midlands police service as to what will happen to neighbourhood policing. Neighbourhood policing is not just crucial in terms of safety and security—actually, neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of counter-terrorism. It is about the systematic cultivation of relationships with the community, the acquiring of intelligence and the identifying of wrongdoing that is absolutely essential. The West Midlands police have said that, if they have to pay these pension costs, 450 more police officers will go as a consequence. That will stretch the thin blue line ever thinner, with ever more serious consequences.

[Gareth Snell]

I think we all know in this House the dedication that my hon. Friend has to the police services not just in the west midlands but across the country. He speaks very much to the situation we have in Staffordshire, where neighbourhood teams are now being asked to look after increasingly large areas, meaning that they lose the connections with local communities whereby they gather intelligence and prevent much more serious crime from happening. Does he share my concern that there is only so far that we can stretch neighbourhood policing before it becomes meaningless and before what we actually have is policing that is no more than numbers of officers sitting at a desk because they simply cannot patrol the patch they have been sent to?

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is the hollowing-out of neighbourhood policing, with the immense dangers that I have described in relation to, for example, counter-terrorism, as well as the role that neighbourhood policing plays in engaging people, diverting them from crime, and preventing crime in the first place. All of that goes. Across the west midlands—and, indeed, across the country—every effort is being made by our chief constable and our police and crime commissioner to preserve neighbourhood policing, but increasingly it is neighbourhood policing in name only because police officers are getting pulled off neighbourhood policing and put on to response. That absolutely cannot be right.

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[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

In the context of this discussion on the impact of yet further cuts to the police service, I want to mention a police officer in my constituency—it would not be right to name him—who was in tears because he could not believe what was happening. He was under real and growing pressure. He was absolutely dedicated to the service that he had given his life to, and he wanted to remain in the service. The fact that really good men and women are contemplating leaving the service they love as a consequence of the growing impact of cuts is fundamentally wrong.

The Government can no longer be in denial. It is simply not true that they cut police and they cut crime. Crime is soaring, including new forms of crime. The police statistics now take account of cyber-crime, of which there are 5 million incidents a year and more. We are at a defining moment in the history of the police service in our country. At the sharp end, our police and crime commissioner David Jamieson and Chief Constable Dave Thompson, who give outstanding leadership, are doing everything they can. They are modelling what happens if they have to find the money necessary to avoid 450 more police officers going as a result of police cuts.

The voice of the police service is clear: enough is enough. The Government cannot ask the overstretched and underfunded police service to pay the costs of much-deserved increases to pension entitlements. Neither should they ask the public to pay. The Government are saying to local authorities, “Oh yes, by all means fund the increase—use the precept,” which devolves responsibility and blame, and absolves the Government of their responsibility through the Treasury to give priority to investment in our police service.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving away a second time. Does he share my concern regarding the precept that the indiscriminate way in which council tax varies so greatly across the country means that there is a 2% increase in Staffordshire, but it is considerably less than 2% in some London boroughs and possibly 2% more in other places? We are therefore building inequality into police funding, rather than the equality we need.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a bizarre situation under the current formula in which high-need, high-crime west midlands suffers disproportionately much more than low-need, relatively low-crime Surrey. That cannot be right.

In conclusion, this is a defining moment for the police service. Labour, led by our excellent shadow Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), is time and again making the argument as to why policing matters. If the Policing Minister came to the streets and estates of Erdington, he would see increasing fear and hear people saying, “The police are great, Jack, but we never see them any longer. We’re losing contact. We rang up, but they couldn’t come out; they said they were overstretched.” That cannot be right. That is why it is crucial that the Government commit to funding these much-deserved pension increases, reversing the tide of the last eight years and investing in their first duty, which is the safety and security of the British public.