Gerald Jones
Main Page: Gerald Jones (Labour - Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)Department Debates - View all Gerald Jones's debates with the Home Office
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady is quite right to draw the connections between policing and other services in the public sector. I cannot speak for the resilience or otherwise of the finances of her particular local authority. I can say, however, that the Prime Minister has tasked me and the Home Secretary with the job of driving cross-Government working to deal with some of the causal factors in crime, beyond enforcement, and we will be talking to local authorities across this country about the part that they can play.
Gerald Jones
Money for additional police officers is welcomed across the board, even though it does not take police numbers back to pre-2010 levels. Surely the Minister would acknowledge, though, that baseline budgets in police forces are being cut again this year, and capital funding is almost non-existent, so unless the Secretary of State is able to win more money for policing generally, forces will be unable to keep the officers they have got.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Gentleman is obviously a cup-half-empty person rather than a cup-nearly-three-quarters-full person. The biggest settlement for policing in a decade should be welcomed by everybody across this House, as it has been across the whole of the policing family. But that is not to say that policing is not without challenges and that it cannot be more efficient. While we do want to see more police officers and a better response to crime, there is always the challenge in public services to do things better for less.