Rural Crime and Public Services

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

The issue with the centralisation of services such as NPAS is that those decisions have been made for all the wrong reasons. They have been made to drive cuts, rather than being genuinely about where provision should be. We would certainly keep NPAS and other services like it under review, but those decisions need to be made on the basis of the efficiency and effectiveness of that service, not solely to drive cuts for ideology’s sake.

The police funding formula cannot be reformed from a position of ever decreasing budgets. We saw what happened when they tried to do that with schools; it just shifted the pain elsewhere. It has to depend on need and take into account all demands for policing services. Though crime levels are important, we know that some rural forces face other unique challenges, such as the cost of policing a huge area, modern slavery and seasonal influxes of tourists. That has to be reflected in the funding formula.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

It felt like the hon. Lady was describing Lincolnshire—a huge, sparsely populated rural area with a huge coastal influx. Given what she says, why did Labour vote against a fairer funding formula that would have benefited Lincolnshire and against £450 million extra for the police? I am still waiting for the bit in her speech where she pays impassioned tribute to the hugely brave work that police officers in Lincolnshire do, in difficult circumstances, when they are battling all the issues that she has raised.

[Louise Haigh]

If the hon. Gentleman had not chosen to interrupt me at that stage of my speech, I would have got on to the bit where I praise police officers. I am a former police officer, as he may well know. We voted against the Government’s unfair funding formula because it did not deliver the funding that our police services so desperately need. As I have already explained, funding our police through the precept is unfair and distributes funding disproportionately away from the areas that need it most.

I would like to close by thanking the NFU for its support in preparing for today’s debate and, of course, the tens of thousands of police officers and staff across our country who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. Our conversations so often in this place cover the pressing challenges of our urban centres, but we can demonstrate how to deliver a consistent policing service for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live. The Government’s reckless and ideological approach to policing has not only left our inner cities rocked by serious violence but has left every single one of our communities exposed to crime. Only a Labour Government will keep the public safe and give the police the resources they need. I commend the motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I might even try to take less time, in the spirit of charity.

As attested to not least by the number of Lincolnshire MPs in the Chamber today, the Lincolnshire police force is a remarkable force. Lincolnshire is a vast rural county—the second biggest in the country, after Yorkshire—yet, although the average level of funding per head in the UK is £104.50, it gets by on £77.90 per head. That is a huge difference. I say gently to the Opposition that it is surprising that their contention is that it costs more to police a rural area than a metropolitan area in some ways. Lincolnshire does not want to take money away from metropolitan areas, but I think we all realise that a fairer share of the cake is important. In that context, though, I think we all also realise that the Metropolitan police’s work on counter-terrorism has a nationwide benefit and that rural police forces benefit from the integrated way in which modern police forces work.

[Mr John Hayes]

Let me say two things on that matter. First, Lincolnshire is not only rural but sparse, and the sparse nature of the population creates real problems in terms of the police responding to events of the kind that have been described. Secondly, the Metropolitan police’s reach, which my hon. Friend describes, does not mean that Lincolnshire police do not have to be alive to those kind of threats and trained to prepare for them, which is costly, too.

[Matt Warman]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for summarising the rest of my speech. He is absolutely right that, although we of course benefit from money that goes to the Metropolitan police and to other police forces, in a county that is a vast place in terms of travelling time as much as distance, the nature of policing is fundamentally different.

We have talked about hare coursing at some length and I do not wish to add much to the excellent contributions we have heard, but let me say two things. First, this is absolutely about the sense of safety that people feel in their own homes and properties. It is a profoundly serious crime that has never had the attention that it deserves in terms of sentencing in the courts. Its victims have struggled to articulate quite how damaging and limiting for their lives it has been not to feel safe in their own homes, knowing how distant they are from anyone else. If nothing else, this debate has been an important contribution on that issue.

Secondly, when I have raised hare coursing in this House and elsewhere, one of my frustrations has been that even people in urban areas in my constituency often accuse those who seek to better fund action on rural crime and hare coursing of not focusing on what they would say are more important urban crimes. We have a job of work to do to explain the damage done by rural crime and hare coursing in particular, not only to our colleagues in the House but even to those who live in market towns just a few miles from where it happens. I absolutely commend the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and the all-party group on rural crime, particularly on hare coursing, but there is plenty more to do on that front.

Next, I wish to talk about the roads, and particularly the cost to Lincolnshire police of the investigation of accidents and collisions. According to Lincolnshire police, on average, it costs £2 million overall to investigate a collision and £1.84 million per casualty. It is of course a tragedy when anyone dies on our roads, but it is also a huge amount of money for our public services, so we are right to consider what we can do to get the incidence of road fatalities down, not solely for the sake of the families of those in our constituencies but for all taxpayers.

Thankfully, Lincolnshire has seen a significant reduction in the number of road deaths and collisions compared with 10 or 15 years ago, but there is still a huge amount of work to do. We have to bear in mind that the work of special constables in particular has been a very practical way for Lincolnshire to deal with the number of crimes and the number of road safety partnership schemes has increased. That should be commended and it is just one example of Lincolnshire police being creative with that £77.90 per head of population, which, as I said earlier, is some £25 per head below the average for the country.

The police force has worked with the private sector. Lincolnshire colleagues will no doubt be familiar with the imperfection of G4S, shall we say, when it comes to its relationship with the police force, but I would argue that ultimately it has done far more good than harm in terms of value for the taxpayer. When it works, it works very well, so I commend it.

I also commend the use of WhatsApp groups to deal with hare coursing, the use of drones and a whole host of schemes. I commend the work of the police with North Sea Camp prison on fly-tipping, allowing inmates to return, to some extent, to the world of work through the genuine public service of helping to deal with fly-tipping, which in our vast rural county is a real struggle and hard to deal with. It is also the right thing to do for the future life chances of criminals in a category D, so-called open, prison, where it is important they adjust to the future world of work.

I will talk briefly about the issues that have come to the urban areas of my constituency, thanks to the many benefits of being a rural area. Large numbers of people have come to Boston in particular thanks to our agricultural economy and the availability of work. That has, however, caused some social tensions and a number of issues around translation for the police, which cost a great deal of money. Dealing with new communities within a rural constituency often falls to the police. Lincolnshire police do a remarkable job in very challenging circumstances. I commend the work of Marc Jones, the police and crime commissioner, and Bill Skelly.

More than anything, what we have seen from all my Lincolnshire colleagues—and from the Minister on the Front Bench—is an argument that a fairer share of the funding cake is only right for rural constituencies. I hope that the next time we debate the police funding formula, those on the Labour Benches will acknowledge that it would be in all our interests to slice that funding cake, however big it is, more fairly than it is at the moment.