Police Forces: Financial Stability

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I always take what the noble Lord says seriously, particularly in relation to child social care. I have not got a particular answer about specialist child protection officers, but I will certainly take that back to the department. In terms of a gap in knowledge at the centre, this autonomy for the police was a deliberate move towards much more local accountability—something that had been called for for a long time. We expect PCCs to have that local knowledge and put forward their plans in light of it.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, it is good to hear about the 5,000 extra police, but I wonder whether the Government have a particular dimension of policing in mind when they arrive at the figures they think are appropriate. When one asks Government whether what we have is appropriate, since the number is smaller than we used to have, the answer is that equipment and deployment will solve the problems. It does not solve the problem of public disorder, where we need boots on the ground—and we need them in quantity. Will the Minister ask her colleagues to ask the police forces of this country to cast their minds back over the last 20 years and consider whether they could contain the public disorder that occurred over those 20 years with the equipment they have now, bearing in mind that communications have changed and they are faced with disorder that is co-ordinated by means of WhatsApp, which cannot be penetrated by the police?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend makes a very good point about the changing face of crime in the light of technology. Of course, we have the recent rise in knife crime. In terms of whether the police have the equipment they need, or whether we have enough boots on the ground to tackle crime, it is up to local police forces to decide the number of police they need in relation to the demands they face and the crime patterns in their area. For some police, gang violence is a particular problem; in other areas, it might be knife crime; and where I live in London, in Camden, moped crime is a particular problem. Resource need is something that needs to be locally determined.