Police Grant Report

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and to support the shadow Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who has done a fantastic job holding the Government to account for the cuts that are blighting our communities.

On Sunday afternoon, I attended a community meeting at Glade Primary School in my constituency about burglary, which has been blighting the lives and safety of residents in Clayhall and right across my community for not just weeks but months and years. I arrived expecting to find dozens of residents ready to speak about their experiences, but there were well over 300 people gathered at the primary school—so many that we had to gather in the playground, where, one by one, they described their experiences as victims of crime in our community and their demand that we do something about it.

We heard from a mother who described her family’s situation following a burglary. She said:

“My 11-year-old does not keep fiction books under the bed – do you know what he keeps? He keeps hockey sticks. He has an evacuation plan where he takes his seven-year-old sister and a phone to the bathroom if we get burgled. We shouldn’t feel this unsafe in our own home.”

Another resident said that her children were also talking about action plans, adding:

“It is not a matter of if, but when our house will be burgled. We feel like we are just waiting for our turn. What are we meant to do if someone tries to get in, the police don’t come out when we call 999 – what practically can we do?”

I will never forget the woman, a victim of burglary, who came to my surgery and told me she slept under her living room window because she was frightened that if she slept in the bedroom people would burgle her house. She is probably looking with horror at the most recent reports of aggravated burglary in my constituency. These thugs do not care whether a home is occupied, as a family in Peel Place discovered when five thugs entered their home, hit their 11-year-old boy with a hammer, held the father down and repeatedly cut his hand with a knife. These are not one-off examples; this is an accurate picture of the burglary that is making my constituents’ lives an absolute misery.

Our London Borough of Redbridge has one of the highest burglary rates in London. Tonight, Redbridge Council enforcement officers will be out patrolling the streets, on foot and by car, doing the job that the police should be doing, so I ask the Minister the question that residents asked on Sunday afternoon: where are our police? I can tell the residents where they are. Many will be unemployed or seeking other work. Police numbers are now at their lowest levels in three decades. In London, we have lost 2,600 officers and 3,000 PCSOs and £700 million has been lost from the Metropolitan police budget.

We can see the impact on crime. It is up almost 16% in Redbridge. Violent crime and knife crime are up in my community and right across London. In spite of the nakedly party political attempts by the Conservative party to lay the blame at the door of the Mayor of London, people know, from this debate and from police and crime statistics from across the country, that violent crime and knife crime are rising not only in London but in cities right across our country. Those cities have one thing in common: the level of cuts inflicted on them by the Home Office. It is an absolute disgrace. As one Conservative councillor said on Sunday afternoon, “I expected our lot to make cuts, but I never believed they would cut the Army and the police.” Is that not the truth? Whether people vote Conservative or Labour or for another party, they do not expect to see the Conservative party inflicting real-terms cuts on the police service. Perhaps that is why barely half a dozen Back-Bench Conservative MPs could be found this afternoon to come in and support the Minister. The great amassed numbers on the Conservative Benches know that what the Government are doing to policing in our country is wrong, and we are seeing the consequences, with rising crime in our communities.

What does that mean in practice for victims of burglary? As residents said on Sunday afternoon, it means that when they dial 999, no one comes; that although forensics turn up a few days later, they never actually see the copper they think will be investigating the crime; that when they dial 111 to report back intelligence, no one answers; that people are smoking and dealing drugs with impunity on street corners in broad daylight; that boy racers can tear down Woodford Avenue knowing that there will not be a police car to pursue them; and that burglars have the front to break into people’s homes while they are in knowing that, even if they or their neighbours dial 999, the chances are they will be in and out before a police officer responds.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Kit Malthouse)]

Why doesn’t he speak to Sadiq Khan?

[Wes Streeting]

And how dare Ministers talk about Labour’s record on crime and counter-terrorism? Members should look at our record in government of funding the police adequately and then look at this shambles of a police grant, which provides barely 50% of what the Metropolitan police asked for to tackle terrorism. We are facing an unprecedented terror threat. We saw it last year with the attacks on this place, across London and in Greater Manchester, and we know that the nature of the terror threat evolves all the time. How on earth can the Minister stand at that Dispatch Box and defend a police grant that would fund barely half of what the Metropolitan police asked for?

The fact is that the Conservative Government are presenting a proposal that no one should support. We should send them back to the drawing board and tell them to come back with a proper plan to protect our communities with adequate funding that does not leave my constituents paying high levels of council tax for a service that is not as good as the one that they had before.