Police Station Closures: Solihull and West Midlands

Julian Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the proposed closure of police stations in Solihull and the West Midlands.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am sure I am not alone in saying that crime is one of the issues that people most frequently raise on the doorstep and in constituency surgeries. Few things matter more to my constituents than knowing that the streets are safe and that Solihull remains a peaceful, welcoming and vibrant community. That is why I have made standing up for local police services one of my top priorities. Since being elected in 2015, I have fought successfully to prevent cuts to our local team of police community support officers and I have supported calls for Ministers to increase police funding across the west midlands. In that same period, David Jamieson, the police and crime commissioner, quite clearly has been running down police services in Solihull, cutting the number of patrol cars in the borough and closing one of my constituency’s two police stations in 2015.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that West Midlands police has lost £145 million in funding, through decisions made by the Tory Government and, before them, the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010?

[Julian Knight]

The Government have been pretty clear that police funding has been protected in real terms once local funding is taken into account, and they are investing £1 billion more in policing in 2017-18 than in 2015-16, despite continued pressure on public finances. Labour always likes to insist that someone else will pick up the tab, but if PCCs want the power to help their police forces, they must expect the responsibility that comes with it, including questioning by Members of Parliament.

Mr Jamieson has announced plans to close Solihull police station, leaving my constituency without a single proper police space. The commissioner claims that it is under-utilised, but why should that come as a surprise when he has been paring back our local police services for years?

I strongly believe that for local politicians to be held accountable, the devolution of power must be accompanied by the devolution of responsibility, including financial responsibility. The public elect representatives to take decisions, not simply to shift blame and demand more money from someone else. In 2015, I joined my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) in urging Mr Jamieson to take responsibility for his powers and to raise the funds needed by the West Midlands police, and lobbied Ministers to grant our region an exemption from the usual 2% ceiling on raising the precept.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman says that police funding was protected. He has just referred to the precept—the precept flexibility raises £9.5 million. The police service needs £22 million to stand still. It is not true, therefore, that police funding has been protected, is it?

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[Julian Knight]

The £9.5 million is a significant sum in that respect; I will move on to where, specifically, I think the money should come from, in terms of the police and crime commissioner.

Devolution does not mean leaving each region simply to sink or swim on its own. At Westminster, we help to oversee the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK. I was therefore pleased that the Government recently announced hundreds of millions of pounds in extra cash for policing, including a £9.5 million boost for the West Midlands police, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) has just referred to. I was confident, along with many of my constituents, that that had put our vital police services on a secure footing, so hon. Members can imagine my shock when I learned that the commissioner plans to close Solihull police station and many police stations across the west midlands.

Let us be clear: there is no good financial case for this closure. According to the press, Mr Jamieson is sitting on a £100 million reserve. On top of that, he recently spent an extra £10 million on non-frontline staff, many of whom do very valuable work but cannot substitute a strong, local police presence. In such circumstances, extra cuts to frontline services are completely non-justifiable. We must not underestimate the significance of this: until recently, our town had two proper community police stations.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I want to ask about the £10 million for non-frontline staff. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that we are talking about fraud investigators, child abuse investigators, 999 call handlers and forensic scientists? Does he think that getting rid of those will help to drive crime down or up?

[Julian Knight]

Of course, I recognise that the non-frontline staff do very valuable work. However, as I will explain shortly, the police and crime commissioner cannot say that his cuts will make a substantive difference either to frontline services or to these non-frontline staff.

In my view, what Mr Jamieson has done is a straightforward breach of trust. When Shirley police station closed its doors in 2015, local residents were reassured that the Solihull branch offered a long-term future for a properly resourced local police presence. Now, less than three years later, it is to go, too. Instead of the Solihull branch, the commissioner proposes to have a front desk somewhere in the borough, but even though the consultation on that proposal is under way, we have not been told where that will be or what precisely it will comprise. Before Solihull police station is closed, I strongly believe that local residents have a right to know exactly what will replace it. At present, they are simply being told to trust Mr Jamieson—as I have already explained, they have no reason to do that.

Worse, research by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is here today to show her strength of feeling and support—as a Whip she is not permitted to speak—raises serious doubts about the extent to which the money raised from the sale of our police station can be redirected to frontline staff. According to the Library, police and crime commissioners are allowed to move funds from their capital to their revenue accounts only in very limited circumstances—primarily to deliver structural changes and to unlock long-term savings.

My constituents deserve to know whether—and how—Mr Jamieson actually intends to use the sale to boost local policing, as I have certainly heard nothing about new capital projects in Solihull or in any of the constituencies of my hon. Friends. It will not do for our police station to be sold to finance new programmes in other parts of the west midlands. My constituents should be given clear assurances that any revenue savings made by closing the station will be spent to boost local police services, and that there is not carte blanche to redirect them all over the place.

Not that local residents have had much of an opportunity to have their say—stakeholders have been offered only 18 working days to respond to the consultation, and originally no point of contact at all was provided for the general public. Only after a lot of chasing by my office was an email address finally provided for the public. Other concerned MPs, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, and I were not even given the courtesy of a call before the details were released to the press. My colleagues and I find that the commissioner is growing ever more autocratic in his dealings with us and our communities, issuing diktats from the centre against the will of local residents.

Solihull is a large town with a distinct character. Residents expect to see that fact reflected in their public services. Local Conservatives and I fought hard over the past few years to secure a devolution deal for the west midlands that brought power down from Westminster, while protecting the authority and independence of our local council. Decisions such as these will only confirm many of my constituents’ worst fears about how communities like Solihull risk getting short-changed by regional institutions that focus too heavily on major urban centres.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman must realise that West Midlands police received £444.1 million in 2017-18 and will receive the same amount under its budget for 2018-19. By any logic, that means there has been a cut somewhere. We are faced with the likely closure of at least three police stations in Coventry: Willenhall, Canley and Foleshill. Something has to give, and he should recognise that there has been a cut somewhere.

[Julian Knight]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is arguing for the closure of his local police stations. I certainly would not do that in this respect. I agree that there needs to be a reallocation of resources, and perhaps there are older properties that might be used more usefully, but at the heart of this issue and of the real anger in my community is the arbitrary way closures have been made, the lack of proper consultation and the fact that there seems to be no real path for the future of policing in Solihull. If the police and crime commissioner had come to us and said, “This is what will replace it. We recognise that your town has a large population and a growing issue with certain types of crime,”—I am about to touch on those—I would have said, “Okay, let’s have a conversation,” but he did not call. He just decided to make closures and release the details to the press.

The difficulty is that that brings devolution into a little disrepute. Of course Birmingham has its own policing needs and the commissioner has a duty to see that those are met. I am sure that the centralised and reactive policing model he appears to favour is better suited to urban trouble spots than to suburban and semi-rural communities, but boroughs such as Solihull face discrete policing challenges of their own. Residents often tell me of their serious concerns about so-called acquisitive crime, such as burglary, and vehicle crime, which is on the increase in the borough. Another potentially serious public order problem that Solihull has faced over the years—certainly since I have represented it in this place—is the repeated occupation every summer of our parks and open spaces by unauthorised encampments. Those events are a source of enormous disruption and distress for local residents, many of whom bring their concerns to my office or tell me about them on the doorstep. A strong local police presence is crucial to protecting communities such as Solihull from unauthorised Traveller encampments. When it comes to that, the reactive approach is the wrong approach.

I will close by saying that this is not the end of the fight. Mr Jamieson may have tried to push decisions through without proper consultation, but both in this place and on the ground in the west midlands, my colleagues and I will keep his proposals under the closest scrutiny, bring him to account and continue to make the case for a wiser and fairer deal for our constituents from this police and crime commissioner.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

The last Labour Government built neighbourhood policing. We put 17,000 extra police officers and 16,000 police community support officers on the beat. We did so because we took seriously the first duty of any Government: to ensure the safety and security of their citizens. That model of detection and prevention was popular with the public and saw crime fall by 43%. That was slammed into reverse when this Prime Minister was Home Secretary. The number of police has fallen by 20,000 overall, and by 2,000 in the west midlands. Crime is up 14% overall, with gun crime up 15%, serious acquisitive crime up 17% and burglaries up 8%.

The Tories frequently praise the police but then fail to stand up for them in this place. Do they not hear what we hear in our constituencies? I organised a public meeting for local people who were deeply concerned about rising crime, and one woman had spent 66 years—

[Julian Knight]

The hon. Gentleman said that the Tories do not do a lot in this place to try to get the best deal for the police. He and I, and my colleagues, have worked together on this issue for a long time. Does he not recognise that decisions such as these and the way they are taken break the bonds of trust between us?

[Jack Dromey]

The decisions are actually proposals from the chief constable in the first instance—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is criticising the chief constable—and then they go to the PCC. The simple reality is that our police service in the west midlands faces increasingly impossible pressures because of the cuts that have been made by the hon. Gentleman’s Government, and he has not once stood up and opposed those cuts or voted against them.

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[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) for securing the debate, as it allows us to set the record straight on police station closures—not only in the west midlands, but across the country.

I start by zooming out for a second and taking a look at what has happened to police stations and front counters over the last eight years. More than 40% have been shut during the time the Conservative party has been in government. In 2010, there were 901 front counters able to deal with the public; the figure today stands at just 510. West Mercia, just next door to the west midlands, now relies on only three front counters, down from 31. Warwickshire has four, down from 14. Bedfordshire has just two to serve the entire county. In Cambridgeshire last month, Jason Ablewhite, the Conservative police and crime commissioner, was forced to announce the closure of one of only two police stations open to the public left in Cambridge as part of a massive savings drive.

Collectively, that handful of stations now serve millions of people. In those counties, stations were a fixture in each town. They have disappeared. The face-to-face contact and the trust that that engendered, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said, has gone, as officers have been reduced to offering a purely responsive service. Officers now routinely have to travel large distances to book in suspects or take evidence. Preventive and proactive crime prevention, which would have taken place out of a community hub, has now been diminished.

We could make party political points in each of these cases. After all, the closures mentioned in all those examples were under Conservative PCCs. However, the public would recognise how absurd that is—they would call me disingenuous—because the chief constables, in consultation with the PCCs, can only play the hand they have been dealt by the Government in Westminster. That hand has been anything but helping. More than £2.7 billion has been cut from the overall police budget in real terms since the Conservatives came to power, with more than 21,000 police officers lost. Meanwhile, crime has soared and demand has rocketed. Communities have noticed it; they see police officers less and they feel increasingly insecure.

The force in the west midlands knows that as well as any. The last eight years have been truly unprecedented in its history, as we have heard. It has reached the bare bones—of that there can be no doubt. The choice facing the West Midlands chief constable, and indeed the PCC, is now an unenviable one. Do they add to the toll of 2,000 officers lost, when more than 80% of the force’s budget is for staffing, or do they make savings in the estate? Is that a choice any force would like to face? Of course not, but it is a choice that has been imposed on them.

[Julian Knight]

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said, with £121 million in reserves, the police and crime commissioner could at least wait and show us precisely what he plans for my borough and its policing?

[Louise Haigh]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has spoken to either the PCC or the chief constable recently, but I have a detailed plan from the chief constable of what he plans to spend his reserves on. The force currently has £106 million in reserves. By 31 March 2019, it will have £54 million, of which £12 million is required by the National Audit Office to be held for general reserves, and £10 million will be held for an insurance reserve. By 2020, reserves will be held only at levels legally required and necessary for day-to-day operational policing.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier that he had not heard of any capital projects going ahead in the west midlands. In fact, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has praised West Midlands police for preparing for the future and investing in a huge IT transformation project and data-driven analysis, so it is interesting that he does not know of those projects, or indeed what the reserves are being spent on.

[Julian Knight]

I did not actually say that there were no capital projects; I said that the money from the sale of the police stations could not be used to directly fund capital projects unless they could be shown to be money-saving.

[Louise Haigh]

I think the hon. Gentleman said that he was not aware of any capital projects benefiting Solihull. There are two that will directly benefit Solihull and indeed will replace the front station access that is being closed down.

Incredibly, the outlook that I just set out is set to get even worse as a result of further real-terms cuts that Conservative Members from the west midlands voted for last month. David Jamieson has warned that, after receiving the biggest cut in the entire country, West Midlands police will need £22 million just to stand still. This is not only at a time when crime is soaring: 999 and 101 calls have reached levels that only used to be received on new year’s eve; missing persons are being reported to the police at unprecedented levels; and mental health calls are being dealt with by the police at levels never seen before. Some 83% of calls to command and control centres are now non-crime, while crime and antisocial behaviour is soaring.

Counter-terror spending was also mentioned, as well as the reserves. Both are used by the Government and Government Members as a diversion, saying that money is being spent on policing when in fact, for every £1 spent on counter-terror, £2-worth of demand is generated for local forces. Neither of those can be said to be reducing demand and increasing funding to West Midlands police or any other police force across the country. The fact is that six Conservative Members from the west midlands voted for these cuts and are now crying foul when the chief constable has been forced to set out their consequences.

The 24 buildings that the chief constable plans to release will save £5 million per year. Regrettably, that will not make up for the real-terms cut in Home Office funding for West Midlands in the year ahead. Nevertheless, even while making those savings, which have been forced on the force, the plans will retain all 10 front counters, recognising the vital service that they offer to the public, while tech and data innovations will mean that the police are not required to return to the station as often as they used to.

However, with crime continuing to soar in the west midlands—14% in the last year alone—further real-terms cuts are reckless, and the public are clear that the responsibility lies with the Government and with Government Members who voted them through. It is the Tories who took a reckless gamble with public safety, and now communities in the west midlands are paying the price.

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[Julian Knight]

I thank the Minister and, indeed, everyone who has spoken in a debate that has been interesting and, at times, quite feisty—that is right, because passions are running incredibly high. Police stations are hugely important to our communities. They are a focal point; they are a reassurance to our communities, and it is right that we look to defend them. At the same time, though, we must always be cognisant that there can be options whereby this can shift; things can change over time. I am very willing to talk with the police and crime commissioner properly about what we do with policing in Solihull.

However, as the Minister stated, there has been a failure of respect. That is such an apposite phrase—“a failure of respect”. That is what the consultation process has shown. The police and crime commissioner has made an active choice to close my constituency’s final police station—a police station in a borough of 200,000 people that will no longer have a police station because he has chosen to close it. He can make another choice today, after hearing this debate—to pause, to reflect, to consult properly and to use the reserves in order to have time so that he can properly map out for my constituents, and for all those who also face police station closures, what precisely he is going to do, rather than, frankly, relying on a wing and a prayer.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the proposed closure of police stations in Solihull and the West Midlands.