Oral Answers to Questions

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Perhaps I have not said often enough in this Chamber that we now have record numbers of police officers across England and Wales, including in the Metropolitan police area, which has the highest number of police officers per capita of any police force in the country. Despite that, I was disappointed to see in the recent figures published that, while across the rest of the country excluding London knife crime went down, on Sadiq Khan’s watch in London it went up.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

T5. In 2010, the period of service to be eligible for a police long service medal changed from 22 years to 20 years. Sadly, no decision was made to award it retrospectively, meaning that people such as Sedgley resident Guy Hewlett, who served with distinction for 20 years, were excluded. This seems to be fundamentally unfair. Will the Home Secretary agree to look into that unfairness, as a simple remedy could be found to recognise officers who served for the minimum 20 years pre 2010?

[Chris Philp]

Changes of this nature are generally not applied retrospectively. I will look at that matter again. Normally, when a length-of-service period has changed it applies prospectively rather than retrospectively, but I will look at the issue.