Government Reductions in Policing

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Notwithstanding the remarks that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), the Opposition, whose motion we are debating this evening, know that it is not possible to have any discussion about any public sector service without having some regard to the national economic context. Colleagues on the Government Benches have mentioned the £120 million a day that the Government are spending on interest, which puts into context the £35 million a day that we are currently spending on policing, the matter under debate. All sectors of public service must be subject to review, and no sector can be immune. Policing must play its part.

It is entirely appropriate that cost reduction should be accompanied by Government reform of the public services. No sector should be immune from the need to reform, and policing must play its part. I therefore reject the proposition in the Opposition motion that does nothing other than criticise the steps that the Government have taken. It offers no alternative proposal. The motion is completely silent on what the Opposition would do to make policing play its part in reducing the burden of public expenditure or reforms to the service. We might therefore assume that the Opposition are happy to carry on spending as they were before and make no change to public service, but we would be wrong, because the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has said that all departments, police included, would need “to make savings”. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), has said that Labour in government would have cut spending and reduced police numbers.

What are the Government actually doing? They are making the police accountable to their communities, cutting increasing costs, removing targets and paperwork and, critically, restoring to police officers the discretion they once had. In my constituency of Rugby we are governed by Warwickshire police, a force in which, notwithstanding the Opposition’s remarks, police numbers fell between 2004 and 2009, so there have not been massive increases in police numbers under the Labour Government. Warwickshire police are currently vacating an expensive and unnecessary force headquarters to save costs, and the chief constable is doing the right thing by focusing on public protection, providing service to the community and increasing productivity on the front line.

One of the reasons I was keen to speak in the debate is that my brother is a sergeant in Warwickshire police with more than 20 years’ service. We often get together and speak about our respective roles. He tells me how he and his colleagues were frustrated by the previous Government’s tick-box approach and the massive increase in paperwork and bureaucracy that resulted in their spending less time on patrol than they did filling in forms. They were not doing what they had been trained to do—to protect the public. As a parliamentary candidate, I spent a Friday night accompanying an officer on patrol and saw just how much paperwork he had to complete.

The police look forward to many of the Government’s proposals and reforms, in particular the one to get rid of the stop and encounter form. Officers appreciate that services must accept some of the reduction in expenditure and in the cost burden of the public sector. There are three significant issues that they are having to deal with. First, the restructuring in costs will lead to fewer people being able to support them in the back office and the pay freeze. Secondly, the provisions of the Winsor report, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has just referred, will change the way they operate and the structure of their pay. Thirdly, over and above those effects officers will also be affected by the Hutton report, which in time will lead to less generous pension provision. I must tell the Home Secretary and the policing Minister that the combination of those three factors means that the morale of our officers is lower than it has been for some time. They understand the need for change, but they feel that they are burdened by those three changes all coming along at one time.

I was delighted to hear the Home Secretary acknowledge in her opening remarks that we have the finest police service in the world. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, will express the regard in which the public hold the police, who are doing a difficult job at a difficult time. I hope that he will provide some reassurance to officers who are committed to service, such as my brother and his colleagues, that their commitment will be recognised. I hope that he will ensure that those officers who work hard and from time to time put themselves on the line can feel positive about the valuable role they play and can focus on the key task of protecting the public.

In conclusion, the Government are right to be taking their current action on policing. It represents just one of a series of very difficult decisions that they have been obliged to take over the past 11 months, all of which in the long term will provide better and more efficient services to the public of this country.