Police Funding

Debate between Karen Buck and Louise Haigh

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Small businesses are facing huge costs thanks to the cuts in police numbers. Many shoplifting offences are not prosecuted, and often police officers do not attend at all. The same applies to residential burglaries and many other crimes. Offenders are going scot-free because the police simply do not have the resources to attend.

Since the Tories came to power, we have lost 21,000 police officers, 18,000 police staff and 6,800 police community support officers, but I fear that, rather than facing up to this crisis, the Government are determined to try to spin their way out of it. This will be the eighth consecutive year in which Government funding for local forces has fallen.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

We have lost nearly a third of our police strength in Westminster. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the saddest aspects of the situation is the loss of the safer neighbourhood policing function, which has been critical not only in fighting crime but in building the community cohesion, relationships and crime prevention work that so many of my constituents now want to be rebuilt?

[Louise Haigh]

Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of our policing system, and it has been the greatest loss following the police cuts of the last eight years. I shall say more about that shortly.

Between 2010 and 2015, cuts in policing amounted to £2.3 billion. At least in those days the Government used to admit that they were making cuts. Between 2015 and 2017, funding for local forces fell by a further £400 million in real terms, and in the year ahead central Government funding will fall by more than £100 million in real terms. It is an insult to the public and to the police that Ministers refuse to admit to those cuts.

The Government will know that in the year ahead, any increase in funds for local forces will only come through a hike in the council tax paid by local residents, and those residents will be angry at being asked to pay more and get less thanks to cuts that the Tories have made from Westminster. What is more, that method of funding the police is fundamentally unfair.