Police Officers: Recruitment

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government’s target of 13,000 police, police and community support officers and special constables will be met to ensure an increase in neighbourhood policing by the end of this Parliament. We have put the funding of £100 million in place next year to ensure that resource is in place to meet that initial mission which we will complete and be judged on by the end of this Parliament. The police settlement has not yet been determined. It will be announced next week, before Christmas. It will be consulted on between Christmas and January and it will be a matter for approval by Parliament by February. As yet, much of the discussion is speculation. I simply say to the noble Lord that his record still needs scrutiny and he needs to remember that his Government reduced police officer numbers by 20,000, reduced the number of PCSOs from over 16,000 to 8,000 and reduced the number of special constables from 20,000 to 8,500 in the course of their term of office. We will meet our targets. We will meet our mission statement and he will judge us on that.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, the previous Government slashed neighbourhood policing and saw a massive increase in anti-social crime, knife crime and street crime. Does the Minister think the Opposition need to reflect on their past record before they come up with suggestions of how we fix the problems they created?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Opposition’s record is one of the reasons they are the Opposition now. The reason they lost the election is because confidence in policing dropped; confidence in the results and outcomes of policing dropped; shoplifting went up 29% in the last year, when the noble Lord was in office. There was also a 40% rise in shop theft over that period in office, and a reduction in the number of police officers. What we are trying to do—this is a difficult task, which I hope the House will bear with us on—is to increase the number of neighbourhood police, put in place respect orders, improve the quality of policing through confidence measures, invest in our policing and ensure that we secure the things the previous Government did not.