Louise Haigh
Main Page: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield Heeley)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You would have heard earlier the Home Secretary and Home Office Ministers stating, in response to questions about reductions in police numbers in specific forces, that police funding has increased in real terms. It is the case that overall funding has been protected since 2015, but I would argue that it is misleading to suggest that that is relevant to numbers of police officers on the ground when it is in fact due to increases in funding for specific issues such as cybercrime and child sexual exploitation. As a result, some forces have not seen a single increase in resources since 2015. Only today, the chief constable of West Midlands police said that the Government need to offer real-terms protection and that policing is getting smaller and smaller. Will you advise me on how I may correct the record?
Mr Speaker
It is a pleasure to seek to advise the hon. Lady, in so far as it could in any way be said that she requires my advice. Let me begin by saying to her that she is an individual both sophisticated and wily. Notwithstanding what she regards as effectively—whether by intention or not—misleading statements, it is apparent from the very terms of her point of order that she, unsurprisingly, has not been hoodwinked in any way. She is on to the matter. She is seized of the issues. She is unpersuaded by the rhetorical blandishments of people opposite her.
I know that the hon. Lady is ferociously bright, but I am sure she will not suppose that others are automatically in every case less so, and therefore incapable of comprehending and seeing their way through the thickets in the way that she has so successfully done. In short, I say to her that these are matters of debate, and she has used the ruse—I use the word “ruse” advisedly—of an attempted but utterly bogus point of order to highlight her grave concern about this important matter. In that mission, she has been successful, for she has aired it and she has persuaded me to respond in terms.
We will leave it there for today but, knowing the hon. Lady as I do, I daresay that she will be at it again with vigour and ingenuity ere long.