Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I can generously deny that I am living in any cloud cuckoo land—to wipe that immediately from the hon. Gentleman’s views. I just think he is being too lenient on these enormous reserves that have been accumulated. They have grown by 150%; they are now 40% of annual revenue. I know that the Labour party is not familiar with careful public finance guarding, but I urge him to take a little more scrutiny to this matter, rather than treating it like some Venezuelan dictatorship.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

2. What the change in the number of frontline police officers is estimated to be between 2018 and 2020.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

5. What the change in the number of frontline police officers is estimated to be between 2018 and 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

Before Christmas, the Government proposed a new police funding settlement for 2018-19 which will increase funding by up to £450 million across the police system. It is for police and crime commissioners and chief constables to determine the number of officers required for their force areas.

[Helen Hayes]

On new year’s eve in West Norwood, 17-year-old Kyall Parnell became the 39th victim of a fatal knife attack in England and Wales in 2017. To solve the growing tragedy of knife crime, the police need to be able to work creatively in partnership with communities, the NHS, and other public sector agencies, but the loss of 20,000 officers since 2010 means that forces across the country are stretched to breaking point. Will the Minister guarantee that there will be no further drop in police numbers?

[Mr Hurd]

The short answer is that that is down to the Mayor and the leader of the Met. The hon. Lady is entirely right to talk about these tragic losses of life in tragic terms; lives have been cut very short. However, she is wrong to focus entirely on the question on police officers, because the last time London saw a spike in deaths from knife crime was in 2008, when there were roughly the same number of police officers as there are now.