Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

What I accept is that what we have seen in the Met and in most forces across England and Wales is that they have dealt with budget cuts. We have seen some reductions in the number of police officers, but crucially crime has been falling. Visibility, accessibility and confidence in policing are not about certain types of building. They are about police being available to people, and that is exactly what the Met intends to do. It intends to put more constables on the beat and increase their visibility by enabling people to access the police in places such as supermarkets.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

There are currently 30 Metropolitan police officers assigned to Operation Alice, dealing with issues relating to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). Another 30 officers are assigned to Yewtree and 170 are dealing with Tuleta, Weeting and Elveden. As well as that, an unnamed number of officers are searching for Ibrahim Magag who went missing just before Christmas. Is the Home Secretary confident that the Metropolitan police have sufficient resources to deal with the bread and butter issues of London, bearing in mind the burden of all these specialist operations?

[Mrs May]

Yes. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Metropolitan police receive extra funding for the fact that they are the capital city police force. I have every confidence in the Metropolitan police in all the operations that they are undertaking. The number of officers deployed to each of the operations that the right hon. Gentleman referred to is a matter for the commissioner and his officers.