Police

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I have explained this to the House before, but I am happy to do so again for the benefit of the hon. Lady. If she looks at the allocations that we have made, she will see that the additional cost of holding an election for police and crime commissioners will not come from force budgets, but has been provided separately by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The argument that, because a cost is involved in the holding of an election, that election should not take place is a very foolish one, and a particularly odd one for an elected Member of Parliament to advance. When the Labour party proposed five different referendums in its manifesto, I did not notice its advancing the argument that a cost would be involved. I should also point out that it is now Labour’s policy for police authority chairs to be directly elected, and that the cost of holding those elections would arise every four years. Perhaps the hon. Lady should remonstrate with those on her party’s Front Bench if she considers that that is not money well spent. There is now agreement on both sides that there should be direct elections, and a cost is involved in that policy. If the Opposition did not believe that a cost was involved, they should not have advanced the policy and voted for it, as they did in Committee just a few weeks ago.

Let me return to the real effect of the funding reductions on forces. Humberside’s force raises the average 25% of its revenue through precept. If we assume that it chooses to adopt the freeze in council tax next year, its total funding will then fall by £5.5 million, or 2.9% of its total income of some £190 million. That is challenging, but it is not unmanageable. As Opposition Members have pointed out, the reductions in years three and four will be smaller.

Some forces, and some Members, have argued that the amount that each force raises in precept should be taken into account in the determination of funding reductions. I understand their argument, because forces that raise very little from precept will face a larger cut than those that raise a great deal. After careful consideration, however, I decided that there would be a number of objections to such an adjustment. First, it would be said that we were penalising council tax payers in other areas who already pay far more for their policing services, and who have experienced a big increase in council tax in previous years. That would certainly be unfair. Secondly, by subsidising forces in that way—including large forces with greater capacity—we would be asking others to take a larger cut in central grant than 20%, and that too would have been regarded as unfair. The fair solution, and the one that was expected by forces and authorities, was to treat all forces the same by making equal cuts in grant.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

The Minister appears to have borrowed that very doubtful concept of spending power from his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and I am afraid that it is no more reputable in his hands than it was in those of his right hon. Friend. The truth is that there will be a 20% cut in grant, and the truth is that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said that a cut of more than 12% will affect police availability. Why does the Minister disagree with HMIC—which has said that a cut of 12% is possible, but that anything beyond that will cut into the front line—and with the chief constable of Greater Manchester, who has said that there will be an effect on front-line policing?

[Nick Herbert]

There are two answers to that. First, forces on average receive a quarter of their funding from local taxpayers, so it does not make sense to consider only the amount that they receive from central Government. What matters to a force is its total spending power, and it is hardly disreputable to take that into account. Secondly, although I do not disagree with the conclusions of the important report of the inspectorate of constabulary—with which I will deal shortly—I think it possible, as I will explain, to make savings that were beyond the remit of its report.

I am pleased that Opposition Members apparently agree with the policy of the inspectorate of constabulary that forces can save more than £1 billion a year without affecting the front line and while protecting visibility, because that is very important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

No, I do not accept that at all. The challenge is to ensure that those functions are done more efficiently; it is not simply a question of handing the function to someone else. No one is saying that back and middle-office functions can or should be abolished, but they can become much leaner.

Furthermore, protecting the front-line service does not mean setting it in aspic. Productivity at the front line can be improved, too, so that resources are better deployed in order to maintain or improve the service to the public. For example, West Yorkshire police have significantly reduced the time taken to investigate a crime. Improving the standard of initial investigation, they reduced the average time taken to investigate low-level crime by 85%. Wiltshire police have significantly reduced the time neighbourhood and response officers spend in custody centres, and off the streets, from an average of 27 minutes to an average of 10 minutes. That is worth 3,000 extra hours of street policing.

In Brighton, Sussex police have put in place a dedicated team for secondary investigations, reducing the amount of paperwork that response officers have to complete and allowing them to return quickly to the streets after answering a call. This saved nearly £1 million, improved response times and sped up the time it takes to complete an investigation.

Surrey police have changed their arrangements in order to co-locate some officers in council buildings, rather than their remaining in little-used police buildings, thereby saving money. That has helped to fund the recruitment of additional constables.

[Hazel Blears]

The Minister will be aware that the area-based grants that many deprived local authorities have received to date have been used, as with my own council in Salford, to tackle antisocial behaviour in exactly that way—by having co-located teams dealing with the same families. That area-based grant has now been completely abolished—by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. If there is any thought of joined-up government, clearly, this is not it.

[Nick Herbert]

I simply do not accept the right hon. Lady’s contention that it is somehow not possible for services to work together because they are receiving less money; that is a strong incentive for them to work together and to save resources.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. It may well be that Ministers believed the figures they were given by the Treasury and believed that front-line services would not be hit. However, the pace and the scale of the cuts are indeed hitting front-line services. They are having an impact on police forces across the country. Ministers ought to go back to the Treasury to discuss that again.

[Hazel Blears]

As my right hon. Friend knows, a consultation was launched this week on tackling antisocial behaviour. Whatever the Government do to rename the orders and introduce some kind of cosmetic change, is it not the truth that in order to reduce antisocial behaviour, we need PCSOs and police officers on the front line in our communities, where it matters?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. She worked to tackle antisocial behaviour over many years and initiated some extremely important work. She is right that all the powers in the world will make no difference if we do not have the police in place to work closely with communities in local areas to implement those powers in practice.