Max Wilkinson
Main Page: Max Wilkinson (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)Department Debates - View all Max Wilkinson's debates with the Home Office
(5 days, 16 hours ago)
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Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
I would like to start by declaring an interest, in that my father-in-law is the police chaplain for North Yorkshire police and my brother-in-law is an inspector in North Yorkshire police. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Hear, hear, indeed, and I would like to segue from thanking them to thanking Inspector Steve Benbow, who leads the policing team in Cheltenham and does a terrific job in difficult circumstances.
The Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing. Unfortunately, community police numbers fell under the last Conservative Government, and it is clear to me from speaking to people in my constituency and elsewhere that they want a visible and trusted police presence in their community to focus on preventing and solving crimes. Far too many crimes—shoplifting, bike theft, tool theft and so many more—go unsolved at the moment, and ordinary people pay the price. Police stations and front desks are disappearing at an alarming rate even under this Government, leaving people with nowhere to go.
Labour has promised the public 13,000 more police officers, but instead frontline officer numbers have fallen. By September last year, we had 1,300 fewer officers than the year before, and in March 2025 the number of frontline police officers was down by more than 4,300 compared with March 2024. That is why it is so important to get these police reforms right, and we must see an improvement in frontline policing numbers as soon as possible.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
I would like to highlight one case from Flamstead, where David, who was a toolman and a tradesman, had his van broken into 10 times. On the 10th time, he called the police while the thieves were there, but it still took officers many days to arrive, and he has now decided to retire because it is too expensive to keep going. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why it is so important to have a frontline community service from the police?
Max Wilkinson
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point. When we call the police, we expect them to turn up. I do not blame the police officers for not showing up. If there are simply not enough of them to do the job, that problem is a hangover from the previous Government. This Government must go faster to solve that problem.
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman may have inadvertently suggested that there was a reduction in police numbers. There was a record number of police officers, the highest in this country’s history, when the Conservatives left power. That number has been reduced—frontline, back office and PCSOs; each and every one of them—by the Policing Minister and the Government opposite. I know that the hon. Gentleman, who is always an honest and straightforward Member of this House, would not want to suggest that the Conservatives left us with reduced numbers, when, in fact, they had increased.
Max Wilkinson
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention—[Interruption.] I also thank Government Members for the many communications that are coming from the other side of the Chamber. When I hear the Labour party and the Conservative party arguing about police numbers, I just think it is an excellent advert for voting for one of the other parties.
If the Government are serious about restoring neighbourhood policing, they need to step up, get this reform right and get more officers back on to our streets. Ministers have suggested that the numbers will increase. We do not doubt their good intentions, but they will ultimately be judged on results.
We cautiously welcome the Government’s suggestion that they will assign a police team to every council ward, but the devil will be in the detail. So I ask the Minister—I am happy to take an intervention if she would like to put me straight, because we have asked a written question—will each council ward have its own policing team? Will it be unique to that ward, or will it be assigned en masse to several wards?
Sarah Jones
At the moment, we have a situation where each area has its own named, contactable officer. We are going even further, so that each ward will have its own named, contactable officer. These are hyper-local police.
Max Wilkinson
Based on the Minister’s answer, I assume that each ward has its own police officer and that that police officer has only one ward to deal with.
Max Wilkinson
The hon. Member suggests from a sedentary position that each police officer will have multiple wards. I wonder whether the Minister can clarify that.
Sarah Jones
To be clear, by the end of this Parliament there will be 13,000 extra neighbourhood police. The hon. Gentleman can divide that by—[Interruption.] Yes, police.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Before I call Max Wilkinson, I note that the Front Benchers will have an opportunity to respond at the end of debate.
Ben Obese-Jecty
I concur with the hon. Gentleman’s point on what the Minister has just said. In Cambridgeshire, our named neighbourhood officers—it is a little difficult to pin down exactly how many there are and how big an area they cover—cover a vast area. For example, the officer who covers the town of St Ives—that is the whole town, which has multiple wards—covers every area between St Ives and Ramsey, which also includes several villages. It is for the birds to suggest that Cambridgeshire constabulary will have enough named officers to cover every single ward that is represented currently by local government.
Max Wilkinson
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. That is the point I am trying to draw out. The White Paper is somewhat non-specific on that point. It does say that there will be a named contact for each ward, but the suggestion is that that might be just one person—one police officer or PCSO per ward—and that that officer would have no other responsibilities. I do not believe that that will be the case given the numbers being presented, which means that the White Paper is perhaps somewhat misleading. I am not suggesting for a moment that Ministers would like to mislead the House, but the White Paper does need clarification.
If communities are to have confidence that stretched local police teams can deal with local issues, such as illegal e-scooters and e-bikes, they need certainty that police teams are available and accessible. Failure to do so will lead to more people feeling unsafe and, sadly, to more tragedies. In my Cheltenham constituency, we recently suffered the loss of an 18-year-old, who was riding an illegal e-scooter, in a road traffic collision. In my constituency, and in constituencies up and down the country, we frequently witness e-bikes travelling at speed, often on pavements and in pedestrian areas. An on-street police presence would surely deter such activities. That must be fully funded. Visible policing would also help to deter the onslaught of shoplifting that this nation is suffering. We must hope that the Government’s warm words on that will be backed by action.
We applaud the Government for announcing the impending abolition of police and crime commissioners. We Liberal Democrats have long opposed the politicisation of policing and we believe the money should be spent elsewhere. However, there is a risk that splitting the powers of police and crime commissioners between directly elected mayors and the Home Secretary will perpetuate the same problems with the politicisation of policing that we have experienced since 2012. The Government must ensure that in doing so, they allow crime and police boards, which will be made up of local councillors and representatives of relevant local groups, and will perhaps include mayors, to take over and ensure that police resources—the grant we are talking about today—are properly spent, so that we do not see money being wasted.
The Liberal Democrats are also calling for a police front desk in every community across the country. These would be in community hubs such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls. Such an approach would allow people to report crimes or share information with the police face to face in convenient and accessible locations.
Graham Stuart
When I met the chief constable of Humberside last week, he talked about Bobbi, an AI tool that is now able to meet 75%, and up to 90%, of queries. Does the hon. Gentleman envisage the desks always being manned, or would a computer or AI-based system be suitable in his view?
Max Wilkinson
We envisage them being staffed. Clearly, people want to see police face to face. AI can have a role, although we all know there was a cautionary tale from the west midlands recently that we would all like to put behind us. AI surely has a role, but in the proposals the Liberal Democrats are putting forward there would be staffed desks in convenient community hubs. I ask Ministers to consider that.
As Members will know, crime is not only concentrated in cities and towns. Many Members here in the Chamber represent rural constituencies. NFU Mutual estimated that the cost of rural crime in 2024 was as high as £44.1 million—a shocking cost to our countryside. We must consider the impact on those who live in rural areas, specifically farmers who are having a really difficult time. Their mental health and wellbeing can be badly harmed by crime. A survey of 115 NFU Mutual agents found that 92% believed rural crime was disrupting farming activities in their area and that 86% knew farmers who had been repeat victims of crime, leaving them feeling vulnerable in both their workplace and in their home. Rural communities have seen increasingly organised and damaging offences, yet only a small proportion of the police workforce is dedicated to tackling them. Rural crime is currently dealt with by just 0.4% of the overall police workforce.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about rural crime. My concern is that as the boundaries of police forces become greater, the resources tend to go to the urban areas. We see that in east Devon, where Cranbrook has sucked in resources from villages and towns that have previously had a police presence. Does he recognise that the effect of police being pulled into urban areas is being seen in other parts of the country?
Max Wilkinson
I thank my hon. Friend for his timely intervention. On the issue of policing structures, if the Government impose wider boundaries, as they intend to, we need to ensure that they follow through on their pledges on local community policing areas. The responses we heard in the debate from many Members about five minutes ago tell us that the Government have not yet told the story in a way that will reassure my community or his.
Rural communities are increasingly concerned by the increase in crime they are seeing and want to be reassured that Ministers are allocating the funding that is needed to tackle it. In the report we are considering today, there are few references to rural areas and the countryside. Can we be reassured that rural crime will be tackled by a specific team in every police force? We are calling for a “countryside copper guarantee”, which would see properly resourced, dedicated rural crime teams or specialists embedded in every police force. Will the Government pledge to deliver the equipment, specialist knowledge and communication tools needed to tackle these crimes effectively?
The shadow Home Secretary mentioned facial recognition technology. We accept that this technology has the potential to improve the outlook for members of the public and to make the police’s job easier, too, but it does place our civil liberties at risk, and we must not be relaxed about that. In December 2025, the UK’s data protection watchdog asked the Home Office for “urgent clarity” over the racial bias of police facial recognition technology. Official Home Office research has shown that the technology identifies the wrong person about 100 times as often for Asian and black people as white people and twice as often for women as men.
We seek reassurances that this technology will not be used unless the data can be safely captured, and seek assurance from Ministers that those in minority communities will not be misidentified and wrongly arrested. We hope that Ministers can reassure us that the data will be stored appropriately and that this will not result in the widespread retention of data relating to innocent people. Will the Government consider statutory guidance on this technology to ensure that each police force takes a common and safe approach?
Chris Philp
I just want to pick up two points the hon. Gentleman raised, which I looked into when I was Minister for Policing. First, he raised allegations of racial disproportionality, which arose in 2017 or 2018. The system has subsequently been updated significantly. It was tested by the National Physical Laboratory two or three years ago, and, at the setting the police use it, there is now no racial disproportionality at all. It is a historic problem that has now been fixed. Secondly, on data retention, the system operates in such a way that if a member of the public who is not on the wanted list—like me or the hon. Gentleman, I assume—walks past the camera, our image is then automatically and immediately deleted. I hope that addresses his concern about data retention.
Max Wilkinson
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for addressing those two points. I can reassure him that I am not on the wanted list, although I can speak only for myself. That was a useful clarification, but I would like it from Ministers as well; perhaps the Minister will be able to reassure me when she sums up.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who is sitting beside the Policing Minister, will share my view that police must be better at tackling violence against women and girls. I know that she has done a huge amount of work on this. Survivors of VAWG and domestic abuse deserve to know that properly funded support services will be there, and we must also be reassured that the police have the training to enable them to address so-called honour-based abuse.
The Government should look at introducing high-quality programmes for perpetrators in domestic abuse cases, with the aim of preventing further abuse, and Ministers must make it easier for victims who are already suffering to come forward. The Government should also consider rolling out a Home Office-led national public awareness campaign that tackles the myths around domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, signposts victims to support services and promotes the role of the new VAWG taskforce; there is already some really good publicity going out that we will have seen on our televisions.
Survivors must always be able to safely report incidents to the police, although the complexities of these cases mean there are additional needs that must be addressed. We seek reassurance that police forces will provide for anonymous reporting options and embedding VAWG and domestic abuse specialists in every 999 operator assistance centre—both important measures to help victims to report incidents to the police. These measures should bring together officers and specialists with the training, resources and capacity to effectively support survivors, including by working in partnership with frontline women’s services. Will the Minister therefore commit to establishing specialist taskforces in every police force?
Finally, we ask whether, in considering this report, we are yet again looking at smoke and mirrors—it is the same with funding no matter which party is in government. The Government’s figures assume a maximum police precept rise in every local area, pushing part of the funding settlement discussion to local areas. Should Governments of all colours not just be clearer about that in their communications?