Police Funding

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) has said, this has been an interesting and thoughtful debate, with a large number of contributions from both sides of the House. Before my right hon. Friend rushes off to his important engagement, may I say to him that his chairmanship of the Select Committee over the past few years has been a model of how to chair a Select Committee? There are difficulties sometimes, because we all have party allegiances, but he knows that one of the strengths of the Select Committee system is the way in which it tries to bring some independence of thought to proceedings. That is particularly important when it comes to the Chairs of those Committees. He has chaired the Committee exceptionally well, and I look forward to reading its further reports on policing matters.

I also congratulate my hon. Friends from the west midlands, my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who met and made representations to the Minister about their concerns regarding the policing reductions that we will see over the next few years. I hope that when he makes his winding-up speech he will comment in particular on the points that they made.

I shall not pick out every Government Member who spoke, but I found it interesting that the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for example, should make a plea for opening police stations—because the Minister is going to close them. I am sure he will have an interesting debate with the Minister about that, but he made an important point about the need for community and neighbourhood policing, and let us hope that, whatever happens over the next few years, neighbourhood policing and police presence on the street will be effectively maintained.

The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), whom I cannot see in the Chamber at the moment, made an important point when he said that this is all about choices. Indeed it is. He defended the choice before us on the basis of economic necessity, but our view is that the police have fared particularly badly in the budget settlement and comprehensive spending review. Other Departments have fared significantly better, so somewhere along the line a choice was made about the budget settlement for the police, as opposed to the budget settlement for other Departments.

I should like to praise the police service, police officers, police community support officers, police staff and, indeed, police authority members for the excellent work that they do. We have seen it in London, in particular, over the past couple of weeks, but in other parts of the country, too. When we have these debates, it would be remiss of us not to put on the record every time the wholehearted support of all Members for the police throughout the country, and for their hard work. To be fair, I know the Minister does that. There might be differences between us over how we provide that support, but we need always to recognise their dedication and public service, and the duty that they perform on behalf of all of us throughout our country.

Helped by a record number of police officers, crime fell by 43% under the previous Government, and the chance of being a victim of crime is at a 30-year low, but the Government’s cuts to policing, starting next year as the estimates for 2011-12 show, will put that progress at risk. By cutting police funding by 20% over the next four years, the Government are taking big risks with the public’s safety and undermining the fight against crime and antisocial behaviour.

The speed and scale of the Government’s cuts have put police forces and chief constables in an impossible position. A number of forces have already announced plans to lose thousands of police officers and police staff, blowing apart the Government’s claims that the front line can be protected. Indeed, many of the most experienced officers in our police forces will have to go.

People will be rightly worried that, at the same time as cutting funding for front-line police, the Government want to spend more than £100 million on bringing in directly elected police commissioners—a sum that, according to the Association of Police Authorities, is equivalent to 600 police officers. That controversial experiment risks politicising the police at huge cost to the taxpayer, and it will do little to improve police accountability.

The coalition’s spending review announced that central Government police funding will be cut by 20% in real terms by 2014-15. Funding allocations for individual police forces are expected to be announced in the next few days, so perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on when that will be. Following consultation, a further debate will be possible, as we will know more about the impact on all individual forces. The hon. Member for South Dorset and others, including the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), made the point about what that will mean for individual police forces throughout the country.

The biggest cuts will be next year and the year after, with funding reduced by 6% in 2011-12 and by 8% in 2012-13. Front-loading the cuts will make it even more difficult to minimise the impact on front-line policing through efficiency savings. The Minister has just received a letter from senior Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and independent members of the APA, urging him to reconsider the front-loaded cuts in 2011-12 and 2012-13 in order to

“avoid long-term damage to policing capability”.

The letter warns that the current cuts timetable will also mean fewer police community support officers and could affect the

“safe and secure delivery of the Olympics”

in 2012.

Those cuts go way beyond what experts believe can be achieved through efficiency savings and better procurement. In other words, a 6% cut next year is too much. Coalition Ministers have regularly quoted from the report by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, “Valuing the Police: policing in an age of austerity”, which was published in July, and it says that a “re-design” of the police system could

“at best...save 12% of central government funding, while maintaining police availability”.

The front-loaded cuts of 20% that will start in 2011-12 go significantly beyond that.

A number of Government Back Benchers have said that police forces across the country can make efficiency savings without impacting on the front line. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) asked what the Opposition have said about that. The previous Home Secretary made it clear that he accepted the 12% figure and the HMIC report. However, the present Government propose to go beyond 12% to 20%.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

indicated dissent.

[Vernon Coaker]

The Minister will hide behind local precepting and councils raising money to make up some of the gap, but that is smoke and mirrors—a sleight of hand. There is a 20% reduction in central Government funding to police forces across the country. That goes beyond the HMIC recommendation. Hon. Members must understand that although some money can be saved through efficiency, that amount cannot be saved without impacting on the front line.

[Mark Reckless]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way after I finish this point. The Home Secretary failed to fight the police’s corner in the spending review negotiations, so it falls to Parliament to stand up for the law-abiding public against these reckless cuts.

[Mark Reckless]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the difference between 20% and 12% that he describes makes no allowance for savings from things such as a pay freeze and changes in terms and conditions?

[Vernon Coaker]

I am quoting the Green Book and the HMIC report. We will see over the next one, two, three and four years whether the hon. Gentleman is right in the statistics that he has quoted from this book—that saving and this saving. We will see whether what he says stands up in police forces in Kent, Nottinghamshire, the west midlands and elsewhere across England and Wales, or whether we will see massive losses of police officers, police community support officers and police staff. Then we will see who has understood the statistics and figures correctly, and who is actually right. I will have a side wager with the hon. Gentleman, and it will not be me who is out of pocket, but him.

I repeat the call that has been made to the Home Secretary and other Ministers to go back and say to the Treasury that the police spending settlement is not acceptable, that it must be reopened and improved. Will the Minister give us that commitment in discussing the estimates for 2011-12, or does he just intend to carry on with the settlement as it stands? As the hon. Member for Hexham said, choices are available to the Government. The Minister can try to argue for a better deal, like those for schools, hospitals and the Ministry of Defence. The big casualty in the comprehensive spending review was the Home Office, and therefore the police service and police forces of this country. I know that the Minister says that there is no link between levels of crime and police numbers, but that is not what the public say.

Let us look at some examples. The hon. Member for South Dorset is already getting cold feet about reductions in police officer numbers in his area, and he will not be the only one. Hon. Members will have to go back and say that things will be tough. There will be police officer cuts across the country: Greater Manchester police have announced a cut of 1,387 officers and 1,557 staff; North Wales police have announced that 440 posts will be cut, made up of 230 police officers and 210 staff; Northumbria police have announced a cut of 450 civilian staff; Thames Valley police have announced 800 staff cuts, but there is no breakdown between police officers and police staff; and West Midlands police have announced a cut of 2,200 posts, made up of 1,100 police officers and 1,100 staff.

Whatever the book says, and whatever Government Members say, I am willing to go to each and every one of their constituencies and ask the public whether they want fewer police officers or more police officers on their streets. I will ask them whether they believe that the Government should have prioritised police spending more in the Budget so that police officer posts, police staff and PCSOs could have been protected, or whether they were a price worth paying.

A few months into this new Tory-led Government, I believe that people will be astonished that police recruitment has been frozen, thousands of police officer posts are to be lost and experienced police officers will be forced to retire, including in my own area of Nottinghamshire.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Could the hon. Gentleman help us by telling us what percentage of the budget his party would have cut had it been returned to government, and what the consequences would have been for police numbers? It is a fact, is it not, that Labour would have cut the budget by 20% and made as many reductions in police numbers?

[Vernon Coaker]

That is not the case. The hon. Lady will know, as I pointed out earlier, that we would have accepted what the HMIC report says. The previous Home Secretary made that clear. That report is clear that the level of savings set out in it can be made over four years without having an impact on the front line, but that if cuts go beyond that, they will have an impact on front-line and visible policing.

On top of what I have just mentioned, the number of police community support officers will go down and police staff numbers will fall dramatically. Coalition Members will have some explaining to do when they go back to their constituencies. The estimates for 2011-12 will be just the start, unless the Minister and his colleagues start to stand up for the police. They should stop defending the cuts and start defending the police and the communities that they serve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

He has been caught out. I note that, in his letter to the chief inspector of constabulary, the right hon. Gentleman did not apologise for describing the chief inspector’s report as a “smear” or “corrupt and erroneous”, but that is what he said on Monday. I hesitate, after Monday, to advise hon. Members about using their words carefully, but the right hon. Gentleman should learn that he needs to choose his words more carefully when talking about the inspector’s report. I am sure that he will do so in future.

It is essential that we address the bureaucracy—

[Vernon Coaker]

I should like to quote from the HMIC report, because the Minister disputed the 12% figure that I used in relation to central Government funding. The report stated:

“A re-design of the system…has the potential, at best, to save 12% of central government funding, while maintaining police availability. A cut beyond 12% would almost certainly reduce police availability”.

The 12% referred to central Government funding, so the Minister was wrong.

[Nick Herbert]

No, the Audit Commission and HMIC said that the savings that could be made available to police officers were more than £1 billion a year—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood is in no position to criticise anyone for misquoting people—[Interruption.] No, I did not.

The Opposition simply do not focus on the importance of reducing bureaucracy or of changing shift patterns. I want to give two quick examples. The action that we are taking to scrap stop forms and to limit stop-and-search reporting, with all the unnecessary bureaucracy that that has imposed upon officers, will save 800,000 hours of police time. Yesterday, the Assistant Commissioner of the Met, Ian McPherson, told the Greater London authority in an evidence session at which I was present that changing shift patterns in the Met will effectively increase staffing levels by an equivalent of 20% on Friday and Saturday evenings. There are things that we can do to improve the efficiency and deployment of police officers within the availability of constrained resources. That is why it is so important that we continue to reduce interference from the point of view of central Government, and why we have scrapped the remaining targets and the pledge. It is also why we intend to give more discretion to police forces so that they can make these important management decisions.

I want quickly to comment on what hon. Members have said about the use of the A19 procedure to enforce retirement for officers who have served for more than 30 years. There are only 3,000 officers to whom A19 might apply, out of a total in England and Wales of 143,000. It is not the ideal procedure, which is why we have set up a review of pay and conditions by Tom Winsor, which will report in February. It is important that we address issues such as the number of officers on restricted duties—more than 5,500—and the institutionalisation of overtime, when overtime costs are still in the region of £400 million a year. These are all areas in which considerable savings could be delivered to help to protect front-line policing.

Finally, I want to address the issue of police numbers and crime. I want to put on record what I actually said in the interview on “The World this Weekend”, which, by the way, was heavily edited. Nevertheless, as stated in the transcript of the interview that was broadcast, when asked about the link between reducing crime and police numbers, what I actually said was this:

“I don’t think that anyone, and no respectable academic would make a simple link between the increase in the numbers of police officers and what has happened to crime. There is no such link.”

The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood is not stupid, and he will know that I was quite clearly referring to that simple link. That was my point and I believe it was a correct point—one also made by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). It was also made by one of the world’s greatest crime fighters, Bill Bratton, who was quoted earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley). If hon. Members believe that there is such a simple link, perhaps they can explain why police numbers have increased in Sweden and Spain, but crime has increased, too. Perhaps they can also explain why police numbers in the United States have fallen, yet crime has fallen, too.

It is obvious to anybody who thinks about it that there is not a simple link, and that what we should be concerned about is how officers are deployed, whether they are available and visible to the public and whether they are there on the streets when the public want them. What therefore matters is not the total size of the police work force, but the efficiency and effectiveness of their deployment and how much they are tied up by bureaucracy. That is an issue that the Opposition simply will not address.

Opposition Members talked about the cost of police and crime commissioners. May I point out that the £100 million costing by the hon. Member for Gedling for police and crime commissioners was for a period beyond that covered by the spending review. The annual additional cost of police and commissioners is reflected only in the election cost and there will be no greater cost for the police authorities themselves. The money will not come out of police force budgets. It represents £12.5 million a year on average—less than 0.1% of police spend. Pointing out that an election will cost too much money and should not be held in the first place is not a good argument for any hon. Member to advance against a democratic reform. That is a very weak and poor argument.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) that we are determined to ensure a safe Olympics and that we will make further announcements about the police funding for the Olympics in due course. I would be happy to meet him to discuss any concerns about that.

While Labour Members continue to play politics, continue to criticise cuts, even though they would have made them themselves, and continue to criticise democratic accountability, even though they would have introduced it themselves, Government Members know that we must tackle the deficit. It is in our national interest to do so, not least for the sake of the future funding of police officers generally and of individual officers. We are determined to make the savings by reducing bureaucracy, giving forces more freedom and driving out cost. In so doing, we are sure that we can protect the front line and the visible and available policing that the public value. The public want to know that the police will be there for them, and we are absolutely determined that they will be.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54(4)).

Department for International Development