Policing (England and Wales)

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I join others in paying tribute to the three excellent maiden speeches we have heard this evening, but particularly that from the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson). As a fellow daughter of a police officer, I was particularly moved by her speech, and I look forward to working with her on all matters relating to policing over the coming months and years. I also join others in paying tribute to our incredibly dedicated and brave police officers and police staff across the country, not least in West Yorkshire, under Chief Constable John Robins. They work incredibly hard to keep us and all our communities safe, and I pay tribute to them for the work they do.

The uplift in funding is incredibly welcome, not least because it is essential. Since 2010, West Yorkshire police has lost 1,200 frontline officers and 800 members of staff, which has undeniably had an impact on their ability to do the basics, let alone respond to the increased complexity of crime and the social challenges that are now the responsibility of the police. I have spoken at length in this Chamber about my experiences of being out with officers in my constituency and how one particularly harrowing experience led to the Protect the Protectors campaign. I welcome the investment in technology and advances in forensics that stand to make the police more effective, but I know that in almost every aspect of policing the number of boots on the ground really does matter.

West Yorkshire police is the fourth largest force in the country, taking in Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield districts. The Leeds district alone is bigger than 12 other police forces. As part of the police parliamentary scheme, I spent Friday night policing Leeds city centre, an area that regularly welcomes over 100,000 people on a night out, and I again pay tribute to the work that officers do there to keep us safe and maintain law and order over the course of a night. We have diverse communities and an awful lot to offer, but, sadly, that sometimes presents challenges with which many of us will be familiar. Our district encompasses a number of Prevent priority areas, and its socioeconomic characteristics and pockets of deprivation increase policing needs. It includes urban areas such as Leeds and Bradford, but also covers some of the sweeping rural areas that straddle the Pennines. The police grant must recognise the pressures that result from complex, evolving crimes such as cyber-crime and human trafficking, and the demands involved in preventing the sexual and criminal exploitation of children and conducting missing persons inquiries. That is why the review of the police funding formula will be so important. It was due in 2019, and the Minister said in his opening speech that it would take place in “years to come”. I urge him to get on with the process as quickly as possible.

In West Yorkshire, we also face challenges relating to firearms and serious and organised crime. Policing priorities have rightly changed to reflect increased awareness of exploitation in all its ugly forms, from child sexual exploitation—of which nearly 6,500 instances were recorded last year—to human trafficking and child criminal exploitation, but although the resources allocated to such exploitation have also increased, they have not yet increased sufficiently to meet the demand.

As we have heard from Members on both sides of the House this evening, a great many of the challenges facing the police relate directly to the pressures caused by cuts in other services. For example, West Yorkshire police responded to more than 20,000 cases of missing people in 2017, which is staggering and completely unsustainable. We have had a self-funded safeguarding uplift to meet that demand, but those officers have come from neighbourhood policing, so the numbers are down in all the vital neighbourhood policing teams with which I work so closely in my role as an MP—as we all do.

Like my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), I have been taking part in the police service parliamentary scheme, which is an incredibly insightful experience—especially as we look forward to debating, I hope imminently. the police powers and protection Bill—and I urge all MPs to do the same. During the recess last week I participated in two night shifts, one with PC Andy Barron, who deals with road policing in West Yorkshire, and one with Inspector Katie Woodmason, when I saw how people on a night out in Leeds city centre are kept safe.

I am sorry to say that the rhetoric in the Minister’s statements seems a world away from the reality of the conversations and experiences that I have had on the frontline. When I shadowed out-of-hours mental health service workers, I spent all night with two police officers who were unable to leave someone who had been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. They could not leave a young nurse on her own with a gentleman who did not agree that he should have been detained, and who was becoming increasingly aggressive. West Yorkshire police saw a 33% increase in the number of mental health-related incidents in 2018, which meant that they were required to respond to an additional 5,000 incidents.

Having started the Protect the Protectors campaign after shadowing single-crew police officers, I know that reduced numbers mean that officers themselves are particularly vulnerable to assaults when they are out on their own. I hope that the Minister is revisiting some of the resulting legislation, and will consider using any or all measures in the police powers and protections Bill to ensure that officers are kept safe. I also hope that the Minister who sums up the debate will tell us when we can expect the introduction of that Bill.

I know that the Government are looking into a number of complicated police pension issues that have been mentioned this evening. Perversely, owing to the changes in the thresholds at which public sector workers start to pay tax on their pension contributions, some senior officers are beginning to receive annual tax bills that are greater than their annual salaries. Unlike doctors, police officers cannot reduce their hours or withdraw their service to mitigate the impact of such bills. I understand that the Treasury is conducting a review of the issue with a view to shaping the next Budget. I ask the policing Minister to look specifically at how those perverse tax disincentives can be reformed, not least because it seems that police forces themselves are paying tax bills for individuals, who are reimbursed by the Home Office, which is reimbursed by the Treasury, to square off contributions to HMRC. In order to pay back the money in the long term, officers are realistically having to hand significant chunks of their pensions back on retirement in order to settle all the accumulated annual allowance taxes. There must be a better way of structuring police pensions to avoid that financial merry-go-round.

Police pension arrangements need to be much clearer, both for officers themselves and for the public purse. More importantly, we need to ensure that we do not haemorrhage experience and leadership in policing at a time when we can least afford it if we are to reach anything like the recruitment targets set by the Government.

The uplift in numbers reflected in this grant is incredibly welcome, but the settlement is for just one year, and does not reflect the increased complexity of crime in areas such as West Yorkshire. The grant provides for no inflationary increases, and core funding has increased only by the uplift funding. Therefore, all pay rises and non-pay inflation must be met by existing budgets. With that in mind, I hope very much that we will see the review of the police funding formula sooner rather and later, so that our police officers can do what they do best—keeping us and our communities safe.