Police Funding

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

No, I will not. I have a second to finish and the hon. Lady has had her say.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) gave a valid and thoughtful speech. The challenges in West Yorkshire are almost unique—that is why it is a Prevent priority area—with serious organised crime and inter-community threats to each other and, indeed, the state. That is why we have increased counter-terrorism across a broad front, not just in local, specialist policing. We have used the full weight of Government, with Prevent, intelligence officers and GCHQ, as well as the regional organised crime units and the National Crime Agency, to ensure that we meet the threat. What was said by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton was inaccurate. There were no swingeing cuts. The bodies that we are using to tackle gun crime—the NCA, GCHQ and the ROCUs—have not been subject to draconian cuts as he claimed, and we are starting to produce some results.

Ultimately, this is a situation that we would not have wished for. However, we have to deal with what we inherited from a Labour Government who were unable to manage the economy, and in the end it is always the public who pay for economic mismanagement. The police are not alone, and my constituents are not alone. No one in the House will be fooled by the leader of the Labour party, who, when I was patrolling the streets with the police in the 1990s, was supporting, voting and fraternising with some of the worst terrorists in the United Kingdom. We will not forget the Leader of the Opposition, and we will not forget what they tried to do to our police and this country.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I beg to move that the question be now put.

[Mr Speaker]

The point of order is not required. I think the Minister has concluded his speech, so we will go straight to the vote.

[Mr Brown]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. It would nevertheless be possible for someone else to rise.

[Mr Speaker]

It would, but it would equally possible for me not to see that person. None the less, I think that the right hon. Gentleman is going to achieve his objective perfectly properly in procedural terms, and I thank him for what he has said.

Question put.