Police: Reduction in Numbers

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

If I recall, the answer I gave the noble Lord was that the strategy was to cut crime, and that that was behind everything we did. When we came to power people had myriad targets and quotas. Now we simply have one, which is to cut crime—and crime is falling.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that during the Northern Ireland Troubles the absence of traffic police and marked police cars for security reasons was accompanied by a significant increase in the number of fatal traffic accidents?

[Lord Bates]

That is an interesting point. I was not aware of that particular fact but, on looking at the figures again, the number of fatalities from road traffic accidents, fortunately, has been coming down. The noble Baroness said that that was in relation to Essex, but the number of fatalities has come down from about 1,900 in 2010 to 1,730 last year. We want to continue that downward progress.