Police Funding, Crime and Community Safety

Debate between Jo Stevens and Steve McCabe

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

We have heard this evening about crime going up, workloads going up, police numbers going down and police support staff numbers going down. HMIC reports that neighbourhood policing is suffering. The Government cannot cull 35,000 posts from the police service and seek to maintain the protection of the public without any impact. The obvious impact of doing that is to put the public at risk. We need more resources to protect neighbourhood policing, not fewer.

HMIC recognises that neighbourhood policing is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) has said, the cornerstone of crime prevention. That is something that the front-line police service have been telling Government for years. Neighbourhood policing enables officers to serve the public, remain vigilant to threats, gather the most accurate intelligence about terrorism and gain crucial local-to-global intelligence, whether for use in the fight against terror or the fight against child sexual exploitation.

To turn specifically to Wales, a really concerning picture is developing. Last week, HMIC concluded in its report that Dyfed-Powys police could do more to keep people safe and to reduce crime. Its report on police effectiveness found that the approach to investigating crimes and supporting the vulnerable and victims required improvement. It also highlighted Dyfed-Powys’s allocation of complex crimes, sexual offences and high-risk domestic abuse to officers who did not have adequate training.

Across Wales, we have seen a reduction of 783 police officers and even more support staff. Those cuts are akin to wiping three quarters of the entire Gwent police force off the face of the map. Police are now going back into offices to do administrative work. Such work has to be done and cannot be ignored—it is crucial to how policing works—but police officers need to be on the streets to build trust and relationships with local communities.

In Wales, the Welsh Government have created 500 PCSOs not to replace police officers, but to backfill the gaps left by the 20% cuts to policing imposed by the Government since 2010. HMIC has stated that cuts should not be more than 12%, but that has been ignored by the previous coalition and the current Government. The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice has said that

“Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners have no excuse whatsoever not to deliver at least good quality policing in their areas.”

I think that they have every excuse, given the cuts to their budgets. South Wales police, in my own area, will have a cash cut of nearly £3.5 million in real terms in its budget for 2016-17, compared with last year.

The police are now spread so thinly that they are struggling to act as eyes and ears on our streets, which undermines their ability to do their job. At the same time, the Home Secretary is talking about risks to national security and the threat from terrorism is at an extreme level.

[Steve McCabe]

I agree with my hon. Friend that such threats are multiplying. The Home Secretary suggested earlier that crime was down and all was well, but she seems to have overlooked the fact that violent crime is actually rising and that in some parts of the country—Birmingham, for example—gun crime is rampant. Is this not the wrong time to cut special resources for policing?