Police Grant Report

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax). I feel very strongly about policing, law and order. We make the laws in this House, and we ask the police to enforce those laws out there. Between us, we make up the before and after of the legislative process. The fabric of a functioning society is based on collectively agreeing the laws that govern our country and then upholding those laws by deciding what happens to those who do not respect them. That is the essence of democracy, and those principles cut right across the different political parties, which is why I find it so difficult to comprehend what this Government are doing to policing and to policing budgets.

West Yorkshire police force has had a 35% reduction in funding since 2010, resulting in almost 2,000 fewer officers and members of staff—a 20% reduction of the force. The force has risen to the challenge set by this Government and has rationalised its estate, modernised to deliver efficiencies and reformed by investing in digital policing. The force has delivered £140 million in savings to get to where we are now. However, I am afraid to say that those deceptive words simply mask the fact that West Yorkshire police are now able to do less with less.

West Yorkshire has the fourth-largest force in the country and, to set the context, it takes in the busy cities of Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford, yet it also covers many Pennine towns extending up to the Lancashire border. We have diverse communities, with black and minority ethnic populations making up more than 50% of 14 of our wards. Although that is a welcome part of our diverse heritage, the House will appreciate that it also presents challenges. International events, terrorist incidents and extremist acts can all undermine community cohesion.

On any one day in West Yorkshire, one police officer is on duty for every 2,097 members of the public. On average, the force makes 136 arrests a day, with a staggering 43 of those arrests related to domestic abuse. The force will attend 38 house burglaries, 44 thefts from vehicles, 16 thefts of vehicles, four serious violent crimes, seven robberies, 57 assaults, 17 sexual offences and 159 incidents of anti-social behaviour, and it will deal with 141 incidents of domestic abuse in total.

We keep being told that crime is falling, that it is changing and that new crimes are emerging, but the lion’s share of criminal activity within this mix is all thefts and violence—there is nothing new in this at all. Yet layered on top of all that are these new and emerging types of crime. Non-recent child sexual exploitation and abuse investigations now account for 33% of all West Yorkshire police investigations—33% of that investigative capacity is taken up by non-recent CSE cases. There were 184 offences relating to modern-day slavery in 2016, which compares with just 19 three years ago. Technology is enabling types of crime such as the grooming of young people for sexual exploitation, human trafficking or radicalisation, and people are most likely to be the victim of fraud than any other crime, with this often being enabled by online activity.

There has been a particularly disturbing increase in firearms discharges in West Yorkshire over the past two years, with firearms predominantly used by organised criminal gangs as a means of resolving disputes. Hon. Members will not need me to remind them that the highest-profile discharge of a firearm in West Yorkshire resulted from the extreme actions of Thomas Mair, who, motivated by right-wing ideology, took the life of our friend and colleague Jo Cox. Sadly, we are no strangers to extremism in West Yorkshire, with several Prevent priority areas presenting a continually evolving threat for the police to assess and manage.

In addition, I want to raise the issue of mission creep within policing, especially in relation to safeguarding and mental health, a point excellently made by the shadow Minister. Some 20% of all incidents reported to West Yorkshire police now relate to safeguarding. More than 20,000 missing people investigations were recorded in 2016, an increase of 258% compared with the 2013 figure. Of those, 2,500 were people who have gone missing on more than one occasion within the past 12 months. The percentage of children reported missing who have gone missing on more than one occasion was 37%. Every day, on average, West Yorkshire police will investigate 65 missing people, with 53 of these cases being graded as “high risk” or “medium risk”, where we are into “drop everything else” territory. The police will also be called to 43 separate incidents associated with mental health.

I have spent time with the out-of-hours mental health team in Halifax and seen the massive challenge that falls to the police outside the normal working hours of other agencies. I was horrified to see that although concerted efforts have been made to keep people detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 out of police cells, there is a crippling lack of alternative and more suitable assessment space. So people in the midst of a mental health crisis are being bounced from pillar to post, until an assessment suite or bed becomes available, often in the back of a police vehicle, but they are predominantly the responsibility of the police for as long as that takes, because of the shortcomings of mental health services to really meet the demand.

On Halloween weekend in Halifax I witnessed four officers tied up with mental health cases for most of the night. That involved two double-crewed units, which probably represented about a quarter of the officers on shift that evening. So I ask the Minister: have we ever really taken a decision about the role of the police in relation to mental health, vulnerability and safeguarding and said that we want to them take on these additional responsibilities? I am not sure that we have, and we have allowed this mission creep to occur.

There will always be a role for the police in these matters, but given that the budget for West Yorkshire police has been cut by 35% since 2010, that the police are not the best agency to take a lead on some of these challenges where there is no criminality, just vulnerability, and that resources are as stretched as they are, we have drastically expanded the responsibilities of the police at the time when our forces can least cope with this. How can we look to empower the right people within social services, care homes, hospitals and the mental health profession, so that they take the lead on addressing these societal problems, rather than have it falling to the police by default, rather than by design, and certainly not motivated by any sense of best practice? Bearing in mind that safeguarding alone accounts for 20% of the workload of West Yorkshire police, the resources that would be released back into neighbourhood policing and back on to the frontline by making this shift could be significant.

I heard the Minister’s opening remarks and the Prime Minister’s comments about funding at Prime Minister’s questions earlier. West Yorkshire’s PCC, Mark Burns-Williamson will be increasing the precept, which is anticipated to generate in the region of £4.5 million. To give that some context, I should say that the 1% pay bonus, which is long overdue for officers but has to be found from existing budgets, will cost about £4 million. To be crystal clear, the pay bonus almost cancels out the precept, leaving a flat cash settlement without inflationary increases, so the settlement pays for less and less year on year and only further cuts within West Yorkshire police will square that circle. That is the reality of the budget before us, which is why we are so concerned about it.

To balance the books, West Yorkshire police will need to find another nearly £13 million over the next four years. This Government have made a lot about reserves, which we have heard again today. Beyond the force’s legal obligation to hold contingency moneys, this year alone the PCC has had to find £11 million from reserves to fund everyday frontline policing. By 2022, most of West Yorkshire’s reserves will have been spent or committed to existing obligations, including capital build programmes and further technology investment. The reserves are being spent year on year just to keep officers on the streets. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) articulated earlier, this money can be spent only once.

Before closing, I want to extend my thanks to Sabina Yasbin of the Met police, as well as to Assistant Chief Constable Angela Williams and Police Sergeant Alex Macleod of West Yorkshire police, who have been co-ordinating my participation in the police parliamentary scheme. It has been brilliant and I recommend it to all colleagues. Every MP will no doubt have a good working relationship with local officers, but having the chance to get a real overview of the local force in detail and to spend time with specialist units that we would not otherwise come into contact with has been an eye-opening and incredibly useful experience, not least because it has helped me to feed into the Protect the Protectors campaign and the related work on the safety of emergency service workers.

With that in mind, I wonder whether the Minister can update the House about when we might see the “Protect the Protectors” Bill return to the Chamber on Report and Third Reading. Its return is eagerly anticipated by colleagues. Can he respond to the inquiries made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the vision of the Bill always having been about having a tough deterrent, so that people reflect on the seriousness of these actions and do not assault emergency services workers in the first place? Although we are incredibly pleased and grateful that the Government have worked with us on extending the six-month sentence for assaulting a police officer to 12 months, we are continually receiving representations from people who are concerned that that will not be the ultimate deterrent that we had hoped for with the Bill. Can the Minister update the House and respond to the letter from my hon. Friend about the Government’s appetite for pushing the sentence to 24 months? I would be grateful if he updated us on that.