Police Grant Report

Luke Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

There is much talk lately of a crisis of trust in our institutions. Well, there is no greater way to tackle that crisis head-on than by delivering on the basic function of the state itself, which is to keep people safe.

Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and walking down their own street, but that is simply not the reality for far too many people in the UK today. Knife crime continues to plague our cities; scammers, fraudsters and burglars are too often allowed to act with impunity; and rural crime, which the provisional police grant report fails to mention even once, continues to fly under the radar. The net result is that trust is shaken and victims are left picking up the pieces of their lives, devastated by crimes that should have been prevented in the first place. I, along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, recognise that the situation that the Government have inherited is awful. Years of failure by the previous Conservative Government decimated neighbourhood policing. Real-terms cuts were made at precisely the time when greater investment was needed.

In the context of policing, it should be abundantly clear to Members across the House that failing to keep pace with inflation is akin to failing to keep pace with crime itself. If that is not clear, then allow me to highlight the following: 6,000 cases are closed each day in England and Wales without a suspect being identified; 75% of car thefts and burglaries are going unsolved; and PCSO numbers are down by nearly 5,000 compared with nine years ago. There is a sense on the doorsteps of my constituency, and across London, that crime is being allowed to pay, and that the days of effective community policing have been consigned to the past. It is vital that the House now gives police forces the resources they need to do their job properly.

The measures the Government have outlined are noble in ambition, but flawed in execution. As the London spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, it would be remiss of me not to highlight three things. First, hiring more PCSOs in the capital will not in itself address the frustrating situation whereby far too often the officers doing the nitty-gritty of neighbourhood policing—the safer neighbourhoods teams—are pulled away from their local beats to assist with major events in central London. That issue would not be immediately solved with the greater capacity the new support officers would provide. It requires a structural shift within the Metropolitan police towards keeping those operations separate, as far as possible, so that local policing and national security policing are no longer put in tension.

The Met itself has sounded the alarm and said that despite the Government’s proposals, it will still be facing a budget shortfall of between £130 million and £450 million. Instead of benefiting from new blood, the Met will have to decimate the force, cutting one in every 10 officers. When I met my borough detective superintendent a few weeks ago, as we went through his staff list, he regularly mentioned positions that will soon be subject to “tough decisions”. That is the brutal reality that the figures announced today will not fix: officers working in preventive community roles, who stop kids turning to crime or being sucked into gangs and antisocial behaviour, will be lost to “tough decisions”.

Secondly, the ambitious number of 13,000 new PCSOs nationally will seem foolish if in urban areas, like London, the thinning out of trust in the police and uncompetitive salaries mean that those recruitment drives flounder. It is vital that the Government support the Met commissioner in his attempts to reform the police and win back the trust of London’s diverse communities.

Finally, the Government must recognise that the funding mechanism built into their proposals is deeply unfair, and amounts to passing the buck on to local taxpayers through the fatally flawed and regressive council tax system. Increasing policing precepts simply drives council tax up. We are under no illusions: the police need that money, but it should be funded through Government investment, not increasing the burden on working people. Indeed, the £230 million in this package simply to offset the rise in national insurance contributions is unfortunate. The Government could have reduced the cost of the package by not introducing that foolish tax hike in the first place.

I hope the Government listen to the concerns outlined in the House today and work across parties to improve their plan. No expense should be spared in keeping our constituents safe, and the Government ought to reconsider and find more sensible ways to make the investments our forces need. Big banks ought to contribute to the safer high streets we need, not cut and run from them. Social media companies profit from the sharing of graphic, violent videos of crime. Only today, while preparing my speech, I saw on my news feed a video of a violent stabbing in Carshalton that occurred last week, flanked above and below by adverts for local companies. That website was not promoting the crime, but it was profiting from the sharing and viewing of those videos. Those companies, which have failed to do enough to remove such content and to prevent online crime, ought to contribute to a safer, more reliable online space. The Government must focus the burden of taxation on them, rather than passing the buck on to the council tax payer to fund greater policing, because those companies have a stake in a safer society too.

If the Government are so committed to fixing the foundations, they must understand that such half measures will mean crime will continue to undercut the very notion of Britain as a safe place to raise a family and do business. It disheartens the shopkeepers across London who feel powerless in the face of shoplifting, and the tradesmen I met on Monday who were robbed of their tools and, with them, their livelihood. It unsettles new parents looking for homes and schools or pensioners fearing ever more sophisticated scammers. It encourages and even vindicates those who would seek to undermine Britain’s stability.