Violent Crime

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his urgent question and for his attendance at the roundtable I hosted recently, along with the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, to update the House on our efforts to tackle serious violence. If I may say so, I think the hon. Gentleman has got the tone right. Putting aside comments from overseas or elsewhere, the job of work is to tackle serious violence.

The hon. Gentleman mentions police resources. He will know that London has already set up a serious violence taskforce and a violence reduction unit. The taskforce has some 300 dedicated officers—I have been out on a raid with them—targeting the hotspot areas within London. The commissioner and others in the policing world are doing specific work across the country to identify and target hotspot areas. I hope the hon. Gentleman welcomed the announcement in the spring statement of a further £100 million to tackle serious violence. The Met is receiving about £20 million of that to support surge policing. As I say, announcements will be made imminently in relation to the outstanding money and the creation of violence reduction units, as well as those that have already been created.

We have seen a huge increase in stop and search across the Met and other policing areas. We analyse this very carefully, and I am pleased that at the most recent meeting that the Home Secretary held with chief constables, they all reported that levels of complaints about stop and search have dropped dramatically. Many of us understand that to be because of the use of body-worn cameras, which provide reassurance not only to officers, but importantly, to the public.

In terms of discussions with MHCLG, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have welcomed the recent announcement by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the specific funding of knife crime projects.

On the spending review, we are working across Government to ensure that we have a cross-governmental spending review programme to help the children who are not just most at risk of serious violence, but have other forms of vulnerabilities, which, sadly, I have to deal with in my brief, including, for example, domestic abuse. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot go into the specifics of the spending review at the moment, but the fact that we have seen an increase this year of more than £1 billion, including the £100 million in the spring statement, and that we have the help of police and crime commissioners, is a firm statement of intention by the Home Secretary and the Government. I thank him again for his urgent question.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I was delighted to hear what my hon. Friend had to say about targeting hotspots. Does she agree that it is now clear that properly used and monitored stop and search is part of the answer, and will she confirm that the Government will continue along that line?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for the experience that he brings to the House from his shadow portfolios over the years. We have always said that stop and search is a vital tool for law enforcement. We are all conscious in this House that a few years ago there was a real problem regarding the trust that certain parts of our society felt in relation to stop and search, and we wanted to try to reassure communities. That reassurance is now there, particularly with the introduction of body-worn cameras. Victims’ families and others I speak to welcome the intelligence-led targeting of stop and search, as well as the section 60 search powers for moments when police action is necessary and needs to be immediate.

Police Grant

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I can only repeat what I said earlier: last year, we protected police spending when the precept is taken into account. The overall level of government funding allocated to police is exactly as announced in the 2015 spending review at £8.497 billion.

I am delighted that the Policing and Crime Act 2017 received Royal Assent on 31 January because it allows us to ensure that we are working towards implementing many provisions that will further help policing to reform and deliver in the future. The Act ensures that collaboration between police forces and with other public services to better tackle emerging threats can go further and faster, providing efficiencies to ensure that money is spent on the frontline delivering for the communities in which the police work. There is substantial evidence showing that closer collaboration between the emergency services can improve public safety, secure more efficient services and deliver better value for money for taxpayers.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows that I strongly support his efforts to get collaboration and more efficiency. Does he accept, however, that these reviews of formulae very often do not take into account the capacity of different kinds of forces to make changes? Large urban authorities have huge capacity to make changes, but it is much more difficult for small rural police forces. Will he ensure that that is taken into account in the review?

[Brandon Lewis]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. I assure him that we are looking at all those factors as we work through the process. It is so important that the police chief constables, the police and crime commissioners and other parties are doing solid work on the ground to ensure that the process is fully informed. I have no doubt that we will be debating that in the House in due course.

Police and crime commissioners and chief constables are already collaborating to make savings and pool resources to improve effectiveness, without sacrificing local accountability and identity. That is a credit to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I certainly agree. I think the method is shambolic.

I turn to broken promises. Let me give a bit of history. In 2011, David Cameron said:

“There is no reason for there to be fewer front-line officers.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 335.]

Yet the number of police officers fell by almost 21,000 after he became Prime Minister. The total size of the police workforce has fallen by over 46,000 since 2010. Following a successful campaign from the Labour Benches led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), told Parliament at the autumn statement in 2015 that

“now is not the time for further police cuts…There will be real-terms protection for police funding.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1373.]

Today’s figures show that he has broken that promise to Parliament. In fact, between 2015-16 and, going forward, 2017-18, the total amount of real-terms Government grants for police forces has fallen by 4.4%. The real-terms cuts we have seen in the past two years come on top of real-terms cuts of £2.3 billion—25%—in the preceding five years, as shown by the National Audit Office.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am interested in the hon. Lady’s argument. Is she asserting that local taxation is not a form of revenue?

[Carolyn Harris]

It is.

The motion means that next year, after inflation, funding for London services will be cut by more than £48 million. The Northumbria police service will find itself in a position of having to increase the local tax burden by £6 million just to stand still, and funding for the South Wales police service will fall by over 5% in a single year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. A London citizen will end up paying more for national events through their council tax than anyone else. I am sure that my London colleagues will be pleased to know that the funding for trips such as that by President Trump will come out of their pockets.

The underfunding of our police services must stop. Our citizens deserve a police force that is fit for purpose, and our hard-working policemen and women deserve a Government who support them to do a job. The Minister is being disingenuous if he tries to imply that the cuts will not have a negative effect on our ability to police. In fact, we are starting to see real evidence that neighbourhood policing is suffering as a direct result of the Conservative party’s actions.

In its latest annual report, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary states:

“Neighbourhood policing is one area where the danger of across-the-board reductions in resources is apparent…As chief officers reduce their workforces, they will need to…include assurances that a smaller police workforce will not compromise public safety and explain any effect there might be on neighbourhood policing.”

I share those concerns. Neighbourhood policing matters. It is not just reassuring to local communities, but crucial for crime prevention. Unfortunately, however, I fear that the damage is already being done. Last year’s HMIC annual report went on to say that

“we found that there were too many forces where there were signs of an ever-larger proportion of the workforce being drawn into responding to incidents, leading to a reduction in crime prevention activity.”

I do not believe that the cuts that we are being asked to approve today will not lead to further reductions in neighbourhood policing. I can only assume that that is a price that the Minister is prepared to pay.

The problem is compounded by cuts to other frontline services. As local authority and mental health services are also pared back, it falls to the police to pick up the pieces when preventable problems become emergency incidents. That is a problem for police resourcing, but more than that it is a tragedy for the individuals, families and communities concerned.

The HMIC assessment continued:

“Society should no longer tolerate conditions in which these illnesses and disorders are neglected until they land at the feet of the police, in circumstances of violence, disorder and desperation.”

Under this Government, those desperate situations are tolerated because they have got their priorities wrong. As a result, police resources are used to respond to individual crises that do not count in the crime figures. Forces themselves estimate that crime accounts for only 22% of the number of emergency and priority incidents. When the Minister says that crime is falling, he is wrong. It is wrong to use that as the justification for funding cuts.

The Minister argues that it is okay to cut, because forces can raise local precepts to fill the gap, but that misses the point. Raising the precept, which most forces, for understandable reasons, are attempting to do, is simply a way of asking the public to pay more because of the Government’s political decision to give less from general taxation.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Carolyn Harris]

I am going to make progress. The Government are passing the buck on a monumental scale. More than that, it is unfair because some forces will be unable to raise as much as others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Drax]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is playing with figures slightly. In a sense, I believe that the Government have honoured that promise, but it depends, as I have said, on council tax being raised every single year. In some cases, it is not, and, as we have heard, the various bands raise different amounts of money. The Minister is well aware of that, and he is doing his best.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Does my hon. Friend and neighbour agree that history suggests that complicated formulae invented by clever statisticians usually go horribly wrong? There is a great deal to be said in this instance, for the reasons that he advances of transparency, simplicity and stability, for tilting towards a formula based on population that we can all understand. Not only would that help Dorset, but it might help the country as a whole.

[Richard Drax]

It is well known in the House that my right hon. Friend is an extremely intelligent man, but I did not know that he was able to foresee what I was about to say in my very next sentence. Perhaps he has read my speech; I do not know. That is exactly the point I was going to make next, and I thank him for his intervention. A fair settlement would use population, not crime statistics, as the basis of any formula. Another hon. Friend has mentioned sparsity and rurality, which are central to counties such as mine. The population measure is fair and robust, and it can be monitored. It is not influenced by police action. Crime statistics ignore things such as road safety and fear of crime, and they assume the same police response for every situation.