Police Funding, Crime and Community Safety

Jake Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I described accurately in my speech what was said about real-terms figures and maximising the precept, and that in cash terms there will be virtually a £900 million increase in funding for police budgets.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend surprised, as I am, that on the one hand Labour Members seem to be arguing that the Chancellor protected funding because of their campaign, and on the other hand that funding is going down?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—they cannot have it all ways, and that is exactly what the shadow Home Secretary is trying to argue. He is saying, “Isn’t it great? It is all because of us that police funding is protected—ooh, whoops, no, we think it’s going down.” He really needs to get his own lines straight before he stands up and speaks in this Chamber.

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[Richard Arkless]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the proposal was in the SNP manifesto, the Conservative manifesto, and the Labour manifesto at the last Scottish parliamentary election. It seems a bit rich to claim after the event that making the move was the wrong thing to do, given that all the parties were advocating such a move.

I am a Member of this House and my party is the third party in it. In that context, it is worth while briefly highlighting the approach that Scotland has taken to budget police cuts. I express my pride that the Scottish Government have done what is necessary to protect a commitment for 1,000 additional officers since 2007. That commitment has been delivered in full. We have delivered savings and maintained an impressive reduction in crime figures. We did it all in the face of the harsh austerity agenda against us. Most importantly, we kept officers on the streets, protecting communities effectively. Sure there have been challenges but all organisational upheaval of that extent will have those teething problems.

Since 2007 in Scotland, we have increased the number of officers by 6.3%, while in England and Wales in the same period the number has dropped by 10.8%. It is dangerous to risk security in that way, yet the Government insist on pursuing the line that they are making the UK safer. How you spend what you have and your spending priorities are often as important as the underlying spend. It is about time that the rest of the UK caught up with the standards set by the Scottish Government in achieving the lowest crime rate in four decades. We have driven savings and upheld the priority of combating new and more sophisticated forms of crime, including cybercrime, financial crime and terrorism. Having said that, I believe it is fundamentally unfair that the Scottish Police Authority has yet to be awarded the VAT status that every other police force in the UK enjoys. That alone would be enough to ease the burden on the force to the tune of £23 million.

[Jake Berry]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would confirm that the Scottish Government were advised, before they made the changes to the Scottish policing structure, that they would lose their special status on VAT. If so, why did they still proceed to make the change?

[Richard Arkless]

I can confirm that that was the case, but we made our protestations abundantly clear at that time, and we also made it clear that we would campaign on the issue. There is an old saying: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the chances are it is a duck. That looks unfair, it feels unfair and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is unfair. Surely that cannot be right.

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[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Robert Peel’s vision for the police was that

“the police are the public and the public are the police”.

That could not be embodied any better than in the enormous contribution made by special constables to police forces across the country. The latest statistics show that 18,000 special constables were working alongside police officers and saving an estimated £75 million last year in man hours. It is impossible for anyone to speak in this debate without acknowledging the huge challenges that police forces have faced in relation to their budgets. In that environment, we are clearly going to place increasing reliance on special constables. They are volunteers who come from all walks of life and all backgrounds. If we were having a conversation with a special constable on the street, we probably could not tell him from any other officer. He is a warranted officer, he has had the same training and he stands shoulder to shoulder with other officers. Special constables are invaluable and they give up their free time to keep us safe on our streets.

With that in mind, I wanted to discuss the case of Andrew Blades, a constituent who was a special constable in Lancashire. He worked as a special for six years, giving more than 2,500 hours to the people in Rossendale, Darwen, Burnley and beyond in east Lancashire, keeping us safe. He moved an unmarked police car across a road to block the way of an oncoming unlicensed, un-MOTed, uninsured scrambler motorbike that had been terrorising the neighbourhood. We should be lauding him as a hero, because not only did he stop a crime being committed, but he protected a fellow officer. Unfortunately, however, his payment for that—for taking those brave, split-second decisions on our behalf as a volunteer—was to be prosecuted for dangerous driving, a case he admitted and for which he has been sentenced to a year’s ban.

The case was well covered in the newspapers and I wish to read out a comment from someone in an online newspaper. This person had probably come home from work and was looking at the online newspapers, and they said:

“It really isn’t often I feel outrage but tonight reading this story has left me outraged and speechless”.

Guess what: I agree with him and so do 1,500 readers of the newspaper. When the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, I would be grateful if he would take the opportunity to inform the House of what further steps he will take to protect special constables, particularly bearing in mind the unanimous resolution of the Police Federation to extend its protection to special constables. I also ask him to see what the Government can do about paying their Police Federation subs for them.

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[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are not safe with the Tories. With underinvestment in the NHS, social care and local roads, with what is happening to the environment and the economy, and with the downward pressure on the pound, we are under threat from the Tories. We are not safe with them. Now, in our communities, there are attacks on the police, and all the Prime Minister can do is refer to the Leader of the Opposition’s tie. How pathetic is that?

The hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) talked about intelligence playing a crucial role in the police service. Of course it does, and significant amounts of that intelligence, certainly in my police force, come from neighbourhood policing, which is under the cosh. He talked about intelligence being important, but the very service that helps significantly with that at the neighbourhood level is under threat.

The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) talked about special constables. They do a fantastic job, but they are additional to, not instead of, the police—that is absolutely crucial.

[Jake Berry]

My grandfather spent 25 years patrolling the streets of Bootle as a police officer, and he would say—as I would—that we must focus on ensuring that police officers are on the streets of Bootle, not sat behind desks in police headquarters doing work that non-warranted individuals can do.

[Peter Dowd]

I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman says that, because I was just coming to that very point in relation to Merseyside police. A fantastic job is being done by the police and crime commissioner, Jane Kennedy; the chief constable, John Murphy; and my local commander, Peter Costello, and all his officers, who spend as much time as they can on the streets, against the odds.

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[Mike Penning]

I will not give way.

We have complaints when we use the precept, and complaints when we cut it. We should be talking about what is delivering the best policing in this country. Has crime dropped since 2000? Yes. For the first time we have a Conservative Government who have the courage to include new types of crime in the statistics. These crimes have not just suddenly appeared in 2010 or 2015. They have been going on for years, but the previous Labour Administration refused to include them in the statistics. Will it be difficult for some forces? Yes, it will. Is it the right thing to do? Yes, and that is crucial.

We have heard today quite a lot of scaremongering. There has been an increase in reporting domestic violence—quite rightly, I hope we will all agree. Every time I am at this Dispatch Box I say that we want people to have the confidence to come forward and report domestic violence, and it was not being reported correctly when we first came to government. We changed the reporting rules for how crime is reported.

[Jake Berry]

In the short time remaining, will the Minister address my concerns about what further protections can be given to special constables, and say whether the Government will act to extend the protection of the Police Federation to them?

[Mike Penning]

I was just coming on to special constables, because they were derided by the Opposition. Volunteers—what a terrible thing to have in a police force! Our specials are the most important people in the community. They come forward and do not get paid and only receive expenses. In my constituency, a special was attacked when on duty one evening. They laid his leg across the kerb, jumped on it and snapped his leg. The sort of protection that we should have—we will look at this, because it is vital—should mean that a special constable or a warranted officer has exactly the same protection as any other police officer in this country, and I speak weekly with the Police Federation about that.

I will respond as soon as I can to the issue raised by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), because I want to get this right. A lot of work is going on, particularly with the chief constables, about how we can get better collaboration on capabilities going forward. It is not possible to come up with new formulas until I understand fully where the chief constables will stand on capabilities. The right hon. Gentleman said that the chief constables had not been in contact with me, but I have met three chief officers in the past seven days, including PCCs, and discussed the issue face to face. I have not spoken to all 43 since the report, but I will ensure that I meet them all.

On Monday I have been asked to go to Didcot by the chief fire officer to thank the emergency services, and I am sure the whole House will join me in that. I hope that the country and the House will not listen to scaremongering from Labour Members who wanted to cut police funding by 10% or more.

Question put.