Cost of Policing Football

Nick Hurd Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and to respond to a debate secured by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss). I was delighted to be shadowed by her when I was Minister with responsibility for industry. I know she is passionate about steel and Sheffield, but we now learn that she has long had the character-forming habit of supporting Sheffield Wednesday. There was a whiff of nostalgia in the air during the debate, which has taken us back to the glory days of Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich Town. I declare an interest: I am a proud but disappointed Spurs fan. I am ably supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who is a proud and exhilarated Scouser.

Three issues underlie this important debate. First, are the public more or less safe than they were at football matches? That matters. Secondly, are we in the right place with regard to the role of the police and how they recover their costs for their work at football games? Thirdly, there is the much bigger issue of whether the police have the support they need to do difficult and invaluable work on our behalf. I hope to address all three issues in the time I have.

First, are the public more or less safe in attending a football match now? The answer has to be yes, they are safer. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough alluded to that when she harked back to the bad old days of the ’70s and ’80s, when the beautiful game was marred by what we saw and heard in our football stadiums and arenas. They are a completely different place now. The number of football-related arrests has reduced steadily since 2000 and is down 50% since 2010. We now have a combination of preventive football banning orders, targeting, public order policing, stadium ejections and modern in-stadium security. Frankly, there have also been changes in supporter attitudes. We are in a different place, as a result of very good work over the years by the Government, football authorities, football clubs, the police and fans. Everyone has played their part.

We must keep this in perspective, but a minority of supporters will always be prepared to organise violence, engage in disorder and, as the hon. Lady rightly pointed out, indulge in racism, homophobia and hate crime. That is where we are, so of course the police need to continue to be involved in keeping the peace around big football games. I will now address how that works, and how they recover costs.

As the hon. Lady pointed out, the police can charge for special police services under section 25 of the Police Act 1996. Legislation and case law—a point raised powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous)—means that the police can claim back only those preventive policing costs that were incurred on land owned by football clubs, which in practice normally means inside the grounds, and they must be asked to do such policing by the club. The result is that football clubs often rely on stewards inside the grounds, with the police waiting outside, ready to be called in. That means that the cost of the police is borne by the taxpayer.

What does that mean for costs? The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough rightly reported the costs relayed to us by the police. I pay tribute to the work of Deputy Chief Constable Mark Roberts, who was passionate and assiduous in pressing Ministers at the Home Office on the issue, and in making the case for rethinking how the partnership between police and football works. The numbers presented to us are exactly those presented by the hon. Lady. The police estimate a cost of around £48 million a year, of which they feel they can recover just over £5 million, leaving a £42 million shortfall. That is a significant number when broken down into the number of police officers, for example, and as the Minister with responsibility for the police, I am concerned about that.

The hon. Lady made a point that I think everyone will understand about the enormous amounts of money in the game or, more specifically, at the top of the game. People will rightly wonder why on earth rich football clubs do not do more to contribute to the costs of policing their games, given how much money they earn from them. The hon. Lady was typically thoughtful in her approach. She did not have much time for the arguments of the Premier League in this context, but we should recognise and place on the record that my colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport negotiate with the football leagues a very significant—£100 million a year—contribution to grassroots projects.

The Premier League pays a great deal of tax. Football supporters are taxpayers—indeed, they will argue that they are entitled to a service—and the Premier League will ask why football should be singled out in this context. Those are all arguments to be had and to be made. I give a commitment to the hon. Lady, and to other interested colleagues, that I will meet the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), next week to talk specifically and exclusively about how we can structure a better, fairer partnership between police and football and, in doing so, reduce the demand on police resources. I am open-minded about how we do that, including about looking at all current frameworks and arrangements.

My third and final point is that we have to put this conversation into the much bigger picture of the funding and resources available to the police. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough referred to this directly and made political points about it. The £42 million shortfall, if the number from the police is accurate, sits in the context of the £14 billion a year that we taxpayers invest in our police system. The honest truth is that we are asking more and more of our police. The police are extremely stretched. Yes, there continues to be scope to improve their efficiency, but I have been persuaded, almost since I started as Minister with responsibility for the police almost two years ago, that they are too stretched, and that we as a society and as a Government need to give them more support. That has been my priority ever since I have been in the job.

As a result of that work, and the support of successive Home Secretaries and senior colleagues, we as a country are investing over £2 billion more in our police system this year than three years ago. I agreed with almost everything that the hon. Lady said, but I am afraid that she was playing some old tunes from the Labour jukebox around cuts to policing. The music has changed; the Government have recognised the pressure on the police. The demand on the police has risen and become increasingly complex, and they are too stretched and need more support from us and from the taxpayer.

Overall, crime is stable. Some crime is rising, but police work is becoming increasingly complex and resource intensive. They need more support, and we absolutely get that. I have been very clear on that as the Policing Minister. There will be an additional £1 billion this year—£2 billion more than three years ago. For South Yorkshire Police, that is an additional £16 million this year, on top of three years of special grant funding of £24 million, and an additional £2.5 million this year to support the work against serious violence to which the hon. Lady referred. I am sure that she will welcome the fact that the chief constable is recruiting more officers in South Yorkshire, though she will argue that more needs to be done. For what it is worth, I agree.

Although we have made considerable progress in securing more resource for the police, looking forward to the comprehensive spending review and considering what is likely to happen in terms of the demand on the police, I am clear that we need to go further. I am delighted to have the support of the Home Secretary, who has made it crystal clear, explicitly and in public, that should he remain Home Secretary, which is not the summit of his ambitions at the moment, he will prioritise police funding in the Home Office bid for the comprehensive spending review.

I reassure the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough that we are working more closely than ever with the police on building a credible bid to secure additional resources, so that they can: increase their capacity and capabilities, which is necessary; do more crime prevention, which is necessary; upgrade their technology, which is necessary; and give better support to frontline officers—the most important assets in the police system—which is necessary. Those are all necessary conditions if the police are to improve the service that they deliver to our constituents and the public. That improvement is necessary given the rapidly shifting picture of rising demand on the police. I am committed, as I know the Home Secretary is, to doing more to support the police in that way.

On the points about funding and football, I make the following commitment: I will sit down with the Minister with responsibility for sport next week to discuss further what we can do as a Government to get a better balance in this relationship, to make the partnership between police and football work more effectively, and to reduce the cost on policing. We should keep things in perspective; going to a football match is a lot safer than it was many years ago, and it is a much more enjoyable environment. The police do extremely important work in that area, and will continue to do so.

We must get the structure right. I am not persuaded that we are in the right place at the moment, and I value the debate, and the contribution made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and other Members. She has my full undertaking that I will follow this matter up next week. Critically, when it comes to the comprehensive spending review, I fully intend to build on the work of the last two years in ensuring that our police officers and police system have the support that they need to do such incredibly important work on our behalf.

Question put and agreed to.