Crime: Police Numbers

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, some of the indiscriminate, random nature of stop and search in the past has been replaced by a move to a much more intelligence-led stop and search, so that people—particularly young people—do not feel that they will be stopped every time they leave the house because of the colour of their skin, as the noble Baroness has said to me in the past. When they go out, people need to know that the police are stopping them because there is an intelligence reason for doing so.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, of course this is about not just the number of police but what they do. East Lancashire 25 years ago was one of the pioneers of modern, community neighbourhood policing in Lancashire. That is now a pale shadow of what it used to be, as there is only half the number of officers and PCSOs. In such areas, will the increase in police which the Government are promising allow us to go back to the kind of effective community policing we used to have? Nowadays the crime levels are going up again.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The Government and the Home Secretary have been clear that they want the police to invest in front-line, much more visible policing that deals with communities in a much closer way than perhaps was previously imagined. The answer is yes.