Police and Crime Commissioners: Budget

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the numbers will not be cut; they are going up quite significantly—I think they went up 9% in the last year. On the point about diversity, the noble Lord is absolutely right; we talked about this last year in relation to the HMICFRS report on the back of the Daniel Morgan inquiry. Over the last four years, numbers have gone steadily up in terms of BME representation in the Metropolitan Police.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. Of course, it is to be commended that the Government are putting more resources into police numbers, but that is only to reverse the cuts that they themselves made. Can the Minister tell us how many of those who are being recruited as part of the uplift programme have actually completed their training and not dropped out or been found not to have met the necessary requirements? What are the Government doing about the chronic shortage of detectives, which is now apparent partly because of the loss of police officers over the last 12 years?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important point about how many officers have taken up their posts. The total number of officers recruited is nearly 140,000, which is an increase of nearly 10%, as I said. I do not know the dropout number. I suspect that 140,000 is the overall number, but if there are any dropouts I will let the noble Lord know.