Jess Phillips
Main Page: Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham Yardley)Department Debates - View all Jess Phillips's debates with the Home Office
(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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Matt Vickers
No, I am going to make some progress, thank you very much.
Some might say that the Minister is giving with one hand and taking with the other. However, given the tax rises, it is clear that she is giving with the left hand and taking back with the far-left hand—[Interruption.] Does the Minister want to intervene?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
I wonder whether the shadow Minister knows what pays for policing. The money comes from the Treasury, and when there is nothing left—for example, because the Home Office in which the shadow Home Secretary was a Minister did not put any money towards many of the schemes set out in their Budget—where does he think the money has to come from?
Matt Vickers
Taxpayers—the people who go out day and night, work hard and cough up for the national insurance rise. It is those small businesses battered by the Government’s slashing of rates relief on leisure, hospitality and retail businesses—absolutely horrendous. Those hard-working men and women out there paying their taxes fund these police officers.
The second big issue with the funding formula is that previous Conservative Governments provided in-year funding for PCCs to cover the police pay award, which was then added to the baseline, so any increase was on top of that already elevated baseline. By contrast, the in-year adjustment for this year’s pay settlement was not added to the baseline, so about £200 million of this apparently generous increase simply makes up for that omission. Around £430 million of that apparently generous increase actually makes up for the Government’s own choices. Adjusting for that, the increase in funding for policing next year is not £1.9 billion at all, but more like £660 million—nearly £300 million less than the last increase under the previous Government. That actual increase of £660 million is not enough to meet pay and inflationary pressures.
Freedom of information requests from police forces highlight the financial strain, with some forces not receiving the full amount required from the Home Office. That shortfall must then be covered, either by local taxpayers or through cuts elsewhere. I would be interested to hear the Minister for Policing’s view on this, given that her party was a strong proponent of freezing council tax in 2023—a principle that, like so many others, seems to have been abandoned now that Labour is in government. All that means is that police budgets are overstretched and the forces will inevitably have to make tough decisions.
Although estimates vary, the National Police Chiefs’ Council projected in December a £1.3 billion funding gap over the next two years, which the council’s finance lead said would inevitably result in job losses. Other estimates suggest that the funding shortfall is closer to £118 million per year, even when accounting for the additional funding announced last week.
Regardless of which estimate we use, either should be of serious concern to the Home Office and the Government. Given current staffing costs, the lower figure of £118 million could mean job losses for over 1,800 officers, which is unacceptable. Yes, a Labour Government who are borrowing like no one is watching and spending like there is no tomorrow could still leave us with 1,800 fewer officers on our streets.
Matt Vickers
Will the Minister be honest and acknowledge that in order to achieve what has been outlined, officers will need to be reassigned? If so, will she assure us that those officers will be assigned appropriately? Can she assure MPs—
Matt Vickers
I am sure that the Minister will have opportunities to come back to me. Can she assure MPs that when their constituents ring 999, they will not have to wait long for an emergency response, because response officers have been redeployed to neighbourhoods?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
First, I express my gratitude to all Members who have contributed to the debate. Before I respond to their points—and I will respond—I take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the police officers, staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. The contribution they make to our society is simply extraordinary, and we are fortunate to have them. I shamelessly take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Orla Jenkins and Jim Carroll, my sergeant and inspector, who almost live in my office—which is not a particularly good thing. They are absolutely amazing, responsive and well-known neighbourhood coppers. It is so important that people know the names of their neighbourhood officers and can contact them.
I do not plan to repeat the top headlines of the settlements that we are debating, as they were covered at length by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, but I reiterate that the settlement represents a significant investment in policing that will kick-start the delivery of the safer streets mission. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of British policing. That is why we have injected an additional £100 million into neighbourhood policing compared with the provisional settlement, which means that we are doubling the funding available to forces to a total of £200 million so that they can carry on the fight against crime and keep communities safe.
Let me turn to some of the points raised during the debate. I welcome the comments from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). It seems that he lives in wonderland. He has talked today as if we have come from some amazing nirvana with regard to policing, not from a situation where every single part of our system—whether it is our courts, our police, our mental health services or our housing—has been so utterly degraded that all of that work landed on the hard-working police forces that he sought to praise.
Matt Vickers
I was just wondering whether the Minister knew how much this national insurance tax raid was going to cost her local police force and those hard-working police officers in her part of the world.
Jess Phillips
I am not exactly sure how much it will cost West Midlands police, but what I do know is that the Home Office is going to give it to them. The shadow Minister has talked as if taxes do not pay for our public services—that is an absolute madness; money has to be raised to pay for our public services. The Home Office is funding the national insurance rise for West Midlands police and every other—[Interruption.] I cannot believe that it is being argued that our police forces were not completely and utterly decimated, and there seems to have been a tiny bit of whitewashing from some Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the role that their party also played in taking 20,000 police officers off our streets.
The shadow Minister specifically questioned the Policing Minister on 999 calls and response officers, and on how we will halve violence against women and girls with the help of this settlement. I want to bring him back from wonderland into the real world and tell him a story about Raneem Oudeh, who called 999 13 times on the night she was murdered by her husband. She called out to West Midlands police 13 times, and there was no immediate response—the immediate response that I am being told has always existed, along with, “Oh, something is going to change.”
Oh my gosh—I do not know what system the shadow Minister thinks has existed for the past 14 years, but I will tell him what we are going to do. We are going to put specialist domestic abuse workers in every single one of our police force response rooms, because of the failures of response under police forces decimated by the years of Conservative Governments. Frankly, I am flabbergasted by the shadow Minister’s gall. My husband often says, “I don’t know why you continue to be surprised.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins) raised the issue of the funding formula, as have many other Members in the Chamber today. I know that the Policing Minister has visited Bedfordshire and very much heard the particular challenges they face.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) talked about the mental health and morale of police. I went out to Hertfordshire police recently to see some police officers who were dog handlers; the dogs were there to sniff out the hard drives of sex offenders and child sex abusers. One of the officers had this amazing dog, Micky, and I noticed that it was the first time I had seen a police officer look genuinely happy for quite a long time. Morale in policing and the health of our police officers have been dreadfully tested over recent years, and I noted how chuffed this bloke was to be doing his job with this dog—the dog was lovely. We need to make sure we are looking after our police officers, and the Policing Minister informs me that as part of our reform programme, we are having a very close look at how occupational health is handed out to police officers.
The hon. Members for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) all raised the issue of the Met. The Met is large and complex, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) mentioned—as did many others—the issue of police officers being taken away from the frontlines in their neighbourhoods in order to undertake not just policing of the capital, but sometimes national policing in other areas. I reassure Members that the funding formula for neighbourhood policing means that it has to be spent on neighbourhood policing and cannot really be pulled away to other areas.
Matt Vickers
Does the Minister think that reducing the number of people working in response policing to make up the numbers in neighbourhood policing will improve or reduce response times?
Jess Phillips
What I think is that we have put £1.1 billion extra into policing, and what I expect to happen across police forces is that we will work with them. As we have seen today from Members in Essex—[Interruption.] Would the shadow Minister like to intervene? What are you shaking your head about, sir?
Matt Vickers
As we have heard, once you take out your national insurance tax raid and the pay rise that you took from the base, it is more like £660 million, which is £300 million less than last year’s settlement from the Conservative Government.
Jess Phillips
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker—they are definitely not your Benches. I heard groaning earlier about the black hole that was left. The shadow Minister makes a point about the uplift in pay, but in this year’s settlement nothing had been put in that budget by his Government to increase the pay of police officers. Nothing was put into the budget, because that was the way that they operated.
Jess Phillips
It isn’t utter rubbish—it’s a fact. Anyway, I shall go back to the people who are engaging with the debate. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) that I send a massive thanks to Chris Duffy, who sounds like an amazing officer. I imagine that he is happy in his work because he works with a dog. Maybe giving every police officer a dog is the answer—that is not Government policy, and neither is clipping people round the ear, however much we might want to.
I say to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) —I will repeatedly say this—that I am from the West Midlands police force, and there has not been a year since I was elected to Parliament when the problems with the funding formula have not been raised with me. The west midlands is one of the areas that the issue affects deeply, so I massively hear that point. Two attempts that the previous Government made to look at the funding formula were abandoned, so we felt very much that this year we had to create a stable system. I remind hon. Members that this is our seventh month in government, but we absolutely hear the arguments about the funding formula, which was not reformed in the last 14 years. We have inherited this.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
May I press the Minister on the specific point about the west midlands? She is talking about funding in the west midlands and I am also a west midlands MP. How does she think that the whopping bill that the west midlands force will face from employer national insurance contributions will impact on its budget? When it comes to money, if she is so passionate about neighbourhood policing, as indeed am I, what assurances can she give that funding from the abhorrent sale of Aldridge police station will come back into services for residents of Aldridge-Brownhills?
Jess Phillips
The first thing I would say is that it will cost West Midlands police nothing because the Home Office is going to fund it. Apart from the amazing world we have apparently lived in with policing for the past 14 years, Aldridge police station was shut down under the budgets that the right hon. Lady’s Government gave to local areas. I am led to believe today that those were like milk and honey.
Jess Phillips
I imagine the point that the right hon. Lady is going to make is that we have a Labour police and crime commissioner, but they can only work with what they are given. I was not going to give way to her, but go on.
Wendy Morton
I think that the hon. Lady is agreeing with me that the closure of Aldridge police station has come on the watch of the Labour police and crime commissioner, who delayed and delayed making that decision for years.
Jess Phillips
I do not disagree that that is how the budgets are given out, but the number of police stations that were closed under the last 14 years of Tory Governments is phenomenal. I believe that a Member mentioned earlier the ones closed by Boris Johnson when he was the Mayor of London. Maybe the right hon. Lady would have heard me already talking about the west midlands, had she been in the debate. I note that a previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), is coming into the Chamber, but for most of the time there have been no Conservative Members in here for any of this debate.
Will my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East please pass on my massive respect to Coggy? The Policing Minister wanted me to confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) that she met Unison last week, and she is absolutely happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the terrible and tragic losses of life in her constituency and in the wider area of Essex.
We are all looking forward to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan) reopening the Chichester custody suite, which he has now become responsible for. Many Members, including him and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), have talked with great passion about the importance of neighbourhood policing and the problems of antisocial behaviour in our areas. We face few things more often as Members of Parliament than complaints about failures on antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhoods. I will not do what the previous Government did, and pretend that everything is world-beating and the best it could ever be and that nothing will ever be better than anything that they could ever do. I am not going to do that.
Jess Phillips
The hon. Member says from a sedentary position that that is rubbish, but the Conservatives literally used to claim things were world-beating all the time.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Will the Minister give way?
Jess Phillips
Conservative interventions have not been that world-beating, so no, I will not. Things are not perfect. We all think that there should be more police officers. We all want greater resource on every single street. Every single constituency MP who spoke, spoke up with passion because they want their neighbourhoods to feel safer.
Jessica Toale
I thank the Minister for her explanation of the funding formula, which is something I have raised with the Policing Minister, too. Seasonality is an issue in my constituency of Bournemouth West. I put on record my thanks to Dorset police for doing so much with the little that they do have, including on things like antisocial behaviour, which blights our town. I invite the Minister to come and see some of the remarkable work that the police are doing with businesses and the council to tackle some of these challenges.
Jess Phillips
I would absolutely love to come to Dorset. What my hon. Friend says is right. I think somebody mentioned the idea of a double bed with a single duvet moving round it, and although huge efficiencies could still be made across forces, some of our police forces do amazing things. I absolutely praise Dorset police for that work.
Steve Barclay
I am trying to make a constructive point about the Minister’s remarks on efficiencies. She said that there are huge opportunities for efficiencies to be made. Much of the debate has been on funding, but she is signalling that things can be done better. What is opaque to me, not least from the conversation that I had with my own police and crime commissioner before coming here, is what productivity targets the Government have set and what variation they expect to close across the 43 police forces. How many police hours does she expect to be freed up from working more efficiently on productivity gains? Or are the Government’s actions adding bureaucracy and red tape and making it harder for police forces to deliver?
Jess Phillips
I do not know yet how many hours. I went out to Thames Valley police and saw exactly how many officer hours were saved by the police having direct video contact. A statement was taken from a victim of domestic abuse in eight minutes, rather than police officers having to go out to their house three days later. That will be rolled out to every police force and will lead to huge time efficiencies in statement-taking. As someone who has given a huge number of police statements—every month—I know how inefficient it is. I would be lying if I stood here and said, “It will be 16,000 hours for each police force.” We will look at exactly what works and how we can make those efficiencies.
Jess Phillips
It is a bit galling when people who have not sat through the debate come in and want to speak. There was no one on the Conservative Benches for the vast majority of the debate. Members who have taken part in the debate deserve a bit more respect.
This Government back the police 100%. We are grateful for the tireless work that police officers, PCSOs and staff do every single day. We have heard today about some of the crimes that they suffer. This investment is a significant step towards meeting our shared ambition to boost neighbourhood policing and to restore confidence in the police that has been so badly lost, as was mentioned by many Members. This Government have prioritised investment in policing in a time of fiscal constraint, but we know that there is more to do. We will work in partnership with the police to deliver our shared ambition to boost visible neighbourhood policing, tackle knife crime and violence against women and girls and reform the police, and to deliver efficiencies to make their jobs easier. This Government will always give the police the resources, powers, tools and support that they need to get the job done.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2025–26 (HC 621), which was laid before this House on 30 January, be approved.
Gareth Snell
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In today’s Prime Minister’s questions, the Leader of the Opposition alleged that a donor to my party was funding a court case challenging the consent to develop the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields. That is entirely untrue. She went on to suggest that the Government’s decision to accept the court ruling was swayed somehow by a previous relationship with Dr Rausing. This is a very serious allegation for which no evidence has been provided. I seek your advice and guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the recourse available to me and other Members to ask the Leader of the Opposition to come back to this House and present the evidence, and if she cannot, to apologise, withdraw the comment and correct the record.