Matt Vickers
Main Page: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)Department Debates - View all Matt Vickers's debates with the Home Office
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Before engaging in the substance of the debate, I thank the brave, hard-working police officers, PCSOs, police staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to protect the public. They work day and night to make our communities safer, and run towards danger while others run away. We recognise the huge sacrifices that they make, giving their time, their health, and in the most tragic cases, their life.
I know that MPs across the House recognise our responsibility to support the police in their work. I am therefore pleased that Members have expressed their concerns to the Minister about this settlement. The reality is that the funding settlement put forward by the Government is inadequate. Everyone in this Chamber who has spoken with their local police force knows that the settlement will not provide the necessary resources, particularly given the inflationary pressures.
Last week, when questioned by Nick Ferrari about the absurd tax raid on our police forces and the fact that her settlement will cut the number of police on our streets, the Minister said that she was
“not pretending that it isn’t…challenging for police forces”.
Today, however, she and her colleagues are attempting to present a different picture, understating the settlement’s impact on reducing police numbers, and the financial challenge that it poses to our police forces. Last week, she stated that PCCs and chief constables must make local decisions about the composition of their forces. Will she now acknowledge that her Government’s decisions have created that impossible position for police leaders? At first glance, the settlement may appear generous in cash terms; however, there is a sleight of hand. The cash increase is not enough to cover new financial pressures, the biggest of which have been created by the Government. The funding will not be sufficient to sustain police forces. Without further action, it will ultimately lead to reductions in officer numbers.
Since the funding settlement was announced, numerous PCCs, chief constables and representative bodies have warned the Government about the challenges that it will create. Why are police forces so concerned? The impact of this year’s funding must be assessed in the context of two key factors. The first is the Government’s increase in national insurance contributions. Some £230 million of this apparently generous settlement will go straight back to the Treasury to pay the Government’s own tax raid on our own police forces. The Government are literally taxing the police off our streets. Economic data has already shown the harm that the national insurance raid has inflicted on businesses and jobs, but it has also reduced the financial benefit that the police will receive from the settlement.
Since the Government chose to impose this tax nationwide, it is only right that the Home Office should fully cover the cost of the tax increase for police forces, but the Government now claim that the £230 million that covers their own tax hike somehow counts as a funding increase. It is not a funding increase; it just covers an extra cost that the Government have imposed on our hard-working police forces. Would that money not have been better spent on more police officers, investments in technology to improve efficiency—something that the Government claim to prioritise—or targeted interventions?
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The shadow Minister, like so many Conservative Members, was supportive of the health and social care levy, which was a larger and more wide-ranging increase in national insurance than anything proposed by this Government. I have just checked Hansard for the entire time that he has been a Member of this place, and not once did he speak out against that tax hike and not once has he referenced police funding, until today. What is it about being in opposition that makes him think he now has the moral high ground?
Matt Vickers
That is a false statement, actually—it is misleading. I have definitely mentioned police funding in the House before.
Matt Vickers
Have a play with Hansard and let us see.
In fact, the sum of £230 million alone could have funded the recruitment, or at the least the retention, of thousands of officers who could have been out there protecting our neighbourhoods. Instead, it will be funnelled back into the Treasury to cover a host of other public sector pay demands from Labour’s union paymasters.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
Would the shadow Minister like to explain how he could sit on the Government Benches for several years but not say a word about the 20,000 officers who were lost, including the 500 lost in Cleveland?
Matt Vickers
After the last Labour Government’s spending and borrowing splurge caused the economic crisis of 2008, cuts were made, but the hon. Gentleman should be happy because thereafter we increased the number of police officers on the streets of the UK to record numbers: 149,679. That is the highest number of police officers ever on our streets.
Several hon. Members rose—
Matt Vickers
No, I am going to make some progress, thank you very much.
Some might say that the Minister is giving with one hand and taking with the other. However, given the tax rises, it is clear that she is giving with the left hand and taking back with the far-left hand—[Interruption.] Does the Minister want to intervene?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
I wonder whether the shadow Minister knows what pays for policing. The money comes from the Treasury, and when there is nothing left—for example, because the Home Office in which the shadow Home Secretary was a Minister did not put any money towards many of the schemes set out in their Budget—where does he think the money has to come from?
Matt Vickers
Taxpayers—the people who go out day and night, work hard and cough up for the national insurance rise. It is those small businesses battered by the Government’s slashing of rates relief on leisure, hospitality and retail businesses—absolutely horrendous. Those hard-working men and women out there paying their taxes fund these police officers.
The second big issue with the funding formula is that previous Conservative Governments provided in-year funding for PCCs to cover the police pay award, which was then added to the baseline, so any increase was on top of that already elevated baseline. By contrast, the in-year adjustment for this year’s pay settlement was not added to the baseline, so about £200 million of this apparently generous increase simply makes up for that omission. Around £430 million of that apparently generous increase actually makes up for the Government’s own choices. Adjusting for that, the increase in funding for policing next year is not £1.9 billion at all, but more like £660 million—nearly £300 million less than the last increase under the previous Government. That actual increase of £660 million is not enough to meet pay and inflationary pressures.
Freedom of information requests from police forces highlight the financial strain, with some forces not receiving the full amount required from the Home Office. That shortfall must then be covered, either by local taxpayers or through cuts elsewhere. I would be interested to hear the Minister for Policing’s view on this, given that her party was a strong proponent of freezing council tax in 2023—a principle that, like so many others, seems to have been abandoned now that Labour is in government. All that means is that police budgets are overstretched and the forces will inevitably have to make tough decisions.
Although estimates vary, the National Police Chiefs’ Council projected in December a £1.3 billion funding gap over the next two years, which the council’s finance lead said would inevitably result in job losses. Other estimates suggest that the funding shortfall is closer to £118 million per year, even when accounting for the additional funding announced last week.
Regardless of which estimate we use, either should be of serious concern to the Home Office and the Government. Given current staffing costs, the lower figure of £118 million could mean job losses for over 1,800 officers, which is unacceptable. Yes, a Labour Government who are borrowing like no one is watching and spending like there is no tomorrow could still leave us with 1,800 fewer officers on our streets.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I would like to explore a little further the shadow Minister’s understanding of how taxes pay for things. He says that taxation pays for police officers and he believes that he has identified a funding gap. Will he explain to the House how he would fill that gap?
Matt Vickers
Last year there was funding of £900 million-plus; this year it is only £660 million. The hon. Gentleman is completely overstating what the Government are giving police officers. [Interruption.] He is wrong. We managed the finances to put the largest ever number of police officers on the streets of the UK. The Minister has given no guarantees that she will maintain that.
Matt Vickers
I will carry on; I am sure that there will be plenty of opportunities for everybody to contribute to the debate.
Thanks to measures introduced by the then Conservative Government, the total number of officers stood at 149,769 in March 2024—the highest headcount since comparable records began.
Matt Vickers
The hon. Gentleman will have plenty of opportunities to contribute.
I know that Labour Members do not like this fact, but the Conservatives left office with record numbers of police and thousands more officers on our streets than ever before. All we are doing is calling on the Government to try at the very least to maintain that number, not reduce it. In reality, the Government are placing police forces in an impossible position. How do they expect forces to meet their financial obligations without cutting officer numbers?
The Government will point to their intention to recruit new neighbourhood officers, but we all know that includes only a relatively small number of new officers—just 3,000. Most of the claimed 13,000 officers are either being reassigned, are part time, are volunteers or are PCSOs with no power of arrest. Given the existing budget shortfalls, I am concerned that that level of recruitment will not be enough. The £200 million allocated in that inadequate settlement appears insufficient to meet the Government’s stated objectives.
Matt Vickers
Will the Minister be honest and acknowledge that in order to achieve what has been outlined, officers will need to be reassigned? If so, will she assure us that those officers will be assigned appropriately? Can she assure MPs—
Matt Vickers
I am sure that the Minister will have opportunities to come back to me. Can she assure MPs that when their constituents ring 999, they will not have to wait long for an emergency response, because response officers have been redeployed to neighbourhoods?
Dame Diana Johnson
I just thought it might be helpful if I gave the shadow Minister a reminder. He is right that there were 149,769 police officers in March 2024, but in June—when the Conservative Government were still in power—that figure had been reduced by 1,232 to 148,536 officers. The numbers went down on the previous Government’s watch.
Matt Vickers
By the measurements in September, that is not the case. By the time September came—[Interruption.] Is the Minister going to give us the guarantee that the numbers will not go down any further as a result of the funding?
The Government have undeniably set well-intentioned goals. Halving knife crime and tackling violence against women and girls are ambitions that will be celebrated across Parliament and across the country, but what are the actual measures for halving violence against women and girls? Without enough police officers available to prioritise those issues, progress will be far more difficult.
Moving forward, will the Government commit to fully funding pay increases and ensuring that additional tax burdens are not placed on police forces in the years ahead? What has been put forward today does not do enough to provide the resources that the police need to tackle criminals in our society, meaning that the only winners will be those who thrive on criminality.
Several hon. Members rose—
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
I begin by putting on record my congratulations to Trevor Rodenhurst, the chief constable of Bedfordshire police, on being awarded the King’s Police Medal for distinguished service. It is well deserved. Like others, I thank the police officers, PCSOs and all police staff at Bedfordshire police for their service.
After years of campaigning for better funding for Bedfordshire police, I am very pleased that this Labour Government have demonstrated our commitment to safer streets and more police in our communities by bringing forward this core funding settlement. Bedfordshire police has been awarded £67.8 million, an increase of 6.6%, as well as £1.8 million in neighbourhood policing guarantee funding for 2025-26. This increase comes after 14 years of Tory cuts and underfunding.
Rachel Hopkins
I will not give way.
Those cuts and that underfunding have required Bedfordshire police to cut spending by over £50 million. I thank our Labour police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire, John Tizard, for his commitment to ensuring that we make the best use of our funds to increase policing capacity, and for his dedication to tackling violent crime across our county. I particularly thank him for his ongoing desire to work in partnership with other public services and the voluntary sector, with a focus on prevention.
Bedfordshire has a diverse landscape, and our police cover urban, densely populated towns including Bedford and Luton, which suffer from crime associated with metropolitan areas. Our county has significant transportation links—road, rail and air—making Bedfordshire a particular hotspot for organised crime, including firearms and drug supply offences. Unfortunately, our police force is also tackling the impact of knife crime; in the period from January 2023 to March 2024, there were 449 knife crime-related incidents in Luton alone, and in recent weeks we have seen more violent crime in Luton. Two stabbings have taken place, one of which tragically resulted in a fatality.
Despite those factors, Bedfordshire police is still currently funded as a rural police force, due to failures by the previous Government to fix the archaic funding formula. Special grants have been provided each year since 2019-20 to tackle the disproportionately high gun and gang crime in Bedfordshire, with a further grant awarded since 2021-22 to combat organised crime.
I cannot comment on the contributions made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), but I and many other Members from across the House who represent constituencies in Bedfordshire have spoken many times about the funding formula for our police force. It is currently awaiting confirmation of the continuation of those special grants, which equate to 5% of its total budget. Announcements are expected later this month, so I urge the Minister to consider the specific circumstances of our police force when taking those decisions, as the impact of those grants cannot be overestimated.
I will close by saying how pleased I am to see multi-year settlements for local government coming in, because that provides local government with more stability in its partnerships with our police forces, working to ensure community safety.
Matt Vickers
We have heard a great deal from Members across the House about the grant and the impact it will have on various communities. I reiterate my earlier point that we are deeply concerned about the effect that will have on policing. Members do not need to take my word for it; they can listen to the words of police leadership. Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, previously said that the force would be
“scaling back our ability to tackle serious violence and organised crime”.
Norfolk’s chief constable, Paul Sanford, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for finance, described the funding package as challenging and said that cuts were inevitable. One of Labour’s own police and crime commissioners, Joy Allen, PCC for Durham, also said the money
“may not go as far as we would all hope”
and that
“We will have to wait and see what this additional funding covers and how long it lasts”.
Does the Minister think the £100 million announced will be enough to stop those cuts?
Unfortunately, we have seen that sentiment reflected not only in words, but in the actions of police forces. Lincolnshire Police says there is a budget gap of £14 million. To manage that, it plans to reduce the number of police officers by around 200, bringing the total down to 1,000 officers by 2028-29, alongside cancelling the upcoming police officer intake for March. Lincolnshire is unfortunately not alone. In Essex the shortfall in the Government’s police funding settlement led the police force to announce plans to eliminate all 99 of its police community support officers—[Interruption.] I am coming to it; worry not!—and reduce staff numbers by around 65 people. While I acknowledge that that was prior to last week’s announcement, Essex will still receive £2.2 million. However, Essex Police had identified a £5.3 million budget shortfall, so it is still over £3 million short. While the additional funding is welcome, it will not be sufficient to bridge the gap. That is a direct result of the funding shortfall.
Derbyshire’s chief constable stated that its budget shortfall of £1.5 million by the end of the financial year had increased to £5.5 million after the Budget. However, it did not stop there. She said that it was compounded further by the Home Office grant settlement in December, which increased the amount that the force needed to balance the books to more than £8.5 million.
In that context, last week’s announcement appears to be only 18% of the previously announced shortfall. Meanwhile, PCCs across the country—from Norfolk Constabulary to Thames Valley Police, and even in my home force of Cleveland Police—have repeatedly highlighted the challenges they face while having to increase the precept. Those decisions expose the hollowness of Labour’s so-called neighbourhood policing guarantee. How can the Government claim to be delivering that if forces must cut staff simply to maintain officer numbers at their current level?
Another aspect of this debate is the decision to increase funding through precept rises. During last year’s debate, Labour’s then shadow policing Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), said from the Opposition Benches that
“the Government have lifted the cap on the precept so that PCCs can raise it by £13 next year for band D properties. That in itself is a challenge for people’s finances, but it also creates differential challenges across the country… That failure of leadership has consequences for less well-off areas”.—[Official Report, 7 February 2024; Vol. 745, c. 286.]
Yet now that the Labour party is in government, its stance appears to have changed. This year’s precept increase is even more significant than the one announced last year. Like so much about this Government, they promise one thing to win an election and do completely the opposite when they are in charge. Given their actions now, will they acknowledge that they underestimated police funding needs when in opposition, and seem to be continuing to underestimate them now that they are in government?
Of course, we will not do anything to stop the police from getting the resources they need, so we will not vote against the motion, but I hope the Government recognise that their actions will not only make their job more challenging but risk undermining communities across the country. They have used a sleight of hand to pretend that the extra money for policing is more than it really is. As a result, police forces will not have enough funding to meet cost pressures, and cuts to police numbers are inevitable. If the Minister for Policing disagrees, will she guarantee that total police numbers will not fall from the record level at the previous Government’s last national workforce count of 31 March 2024?
I know that my colleagues want to work with the Government to empower police forces in their constituencies by giving them all the resources they need. However, we remain concerned that this settlement is a sign that the challenges that the Minister for Policing refers to will only grow over the course of this Parliament. Instead of a tax raid, we should give our police forces the resources they need and show our brave frontline officers the respect and support that they deserve.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)
First, I express my gratitude to all Members who have contributed to the debate. Before I respond to their points—and I will respond—I take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the police officers, staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. The contribution they make to our society is simply extraordinary, and we are fortunate to have them. I shamelessly take this opportunity to give a shout-out to Orla Jenkins and Jim Carroll, my sergeant and inspector, who almost live in my office—which is not a particularly good thing. They are absolutely amazing, responsive and well-known neighbourhood coppers. It is so important that people know the names of their neighbourhood officers and can contact them.
I do not plan to repeat the top headlines of the settlements that we are debating, as they were covered at length by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention, but I reiterate that the settlement represents a significant investment in policing that will kick-start the delivery of the safer streets mission. Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of British policing. That is why we have injected an additional £100 million into neighbourhood policing compared with the provisional settlement, which means that we are doubling the funding available to forces to a total of £200 million so that they can carry on the fight against crime and keep communities safe.
Let me turn to some of the points raised during the debate. I welcome the comments from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers). It seems that he lives in wonderland. He has talked today as if we have come from some amazing nirvana with regard to policing, not from a situation where every single part of our system—whether it is our courts, our police, our mental health services or our housing—has been so utterly degraded that all of that work landed on the hard-working police forces that he sought to praise.
Matt Vickers
I was just wondering whether the Minister knew how much this national insurance tax raid was going to cost her local police force and those hard-working police officers in her part of the world.
Jess Phillips
I am not exactly sure how much it will cost West Midlands police, but what I do know is that the Home Office is going to give it to them. The shadow Minister has talked as if taxes do not pay for our public services—that is an absolute madness; money has to be raised to pay for our public services. The Home Office is funding the national insurance rise for West Midlands police and every other—[Interruption.] I cannot believe that it is being argued that our police forces were not completely and utterly decimated, and there seems to have been a tiny bit of whitewashing from some Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the role that their party also played in taking 20,000 police officers off our streets.
The shadow Minister specifically questioned the Policing Minister on 999 calls and response officers, and on how we will halve violence against women and girls with the help of this settlement. I want to bring him back from wonderland into the real world and tell him a story about Raneem Oudeh, who called 999 13 times on the night she was murdered by her husband. She called out to West Midlands police 13 times, and there was no immediate response—the immediate response that I am being told has always existed, along with, “Oh, something is going to change.”
Oh my gosh—I do not know what system the shadow Minister thinks has existed for the past 14 years, but I will tell him what we are going to do. We are going to put specialist domestic abuse workers in every single one of our police force response rooms, because of the failures of response under police forces decimated by the years of Conservative Governments. Frankly, I am flabbergasted by the shadow Minister’s gall. My husband often says, “I don’t know why you continue to be surprised.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins) raised the issue of the funding formula, as have many other Members in the Chamber today. I know that the Policing Minister has visited Bedfordshire and very much heard the particular challenges they face.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) talked about the mental health and morale of police. I went out to Hertfordshire police recently to see some police officers who were dog handlers; the dogs were there to sniff out the hard drives of sex offenders and child sex abusers. One of the officers had this amazing dog, Micky, and I noticed that it was the first time I had seen a police officer look genuinely happy for quite a long time. Morale in policing and the health of our police officers have been dreadfully tested over recent years, and I noted how chuffed this bloke was to be doing his job with this dog—the dog was lovely. We need to make sure we are looking after our police officers, and the Policing Minister informs me that as part of our reform programme, we are having a very close look at how occupational health is handed out to police officers.
The hon. Members for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) all raised the issue of the Met. The Met is large and complex, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) mentioned—as did many others—the issue of police officers being taken away from the frontlines in their neighbourhoods in order to undertake not just policing of the capital, but sometimes national policing in other areas. I reassure Members that the funding formula for neighbourhood policing means that it has to be spent on neighbourhood policing and cannot really be pulled away to other areas.
Matt Vickers
Does the Minister think that reducing the number of people working in response policing to make up the numbers in neighbourhood policing will improve or reduce response times?
Jess Phillips
What I think is that we have put £1.1 billion extra into policing, and what I expect to happen across police forces is that we will work with them. As we have seen today from Members in Essex—[Interruption.] Would the shadow Minister like to intervene? What are you shaking your head about, sir?
Matt Vickers
As we have heard, once you take out your national insurance tax raid and the pay rise that you took from the base, it is more like £660 million, which is £300 million less than last year’s settlement from the Conservative Government.