Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend. I congratulate Mumsnet on its very admirable campaign on the sexualisation of children. Perhaps one of the best ways forward is to get corporations to sign up and develop their own responsibility. However, I understand from my colleague at the Department for Education that it will look at whatever is necessary, be it regulation or simple persuasion.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. What assessment her Department has made of potential links between police officer numbers and levels of crime.

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

There is no simple link between police numbers and crime—[Interruption.] What matters is how officers are deployed. Our aim is to reduce costs and bureaucracy to ensure that resources can be directed to the front line.

[John Woodcock]

Does the Minister understand how quickly he has seemed so completely out of touch with the reality on the ground? Every community up and down the nation will understand that more police on the street make people feel safer and that it has contributed to a lowering of crime over the past decade. Will he take this opportunity to retract his statement?

[Nick Herbert]

Surely the test of an effective police force is what we are doing with those officers. The report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has read, pointed out that only 11% of a police force’s strength is visible and available at any one time. That number is too low. There is a problem with the bureaucracy that the previous Government created and that we have to deal with.