Paul Blomfield
Main Page: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)Department Debates - View all Paul Blomfield's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am happy to extend congratulations, as I am sure everyone in the House is, on the excellent work of the police in Leicestershire, under both the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner, Sir Clive Loader, who has done an excellent job but is sadly stepping down at the forthcoming election. I would like to thank him for the work he has done in his first term as police and crime commissioner.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
19. The main problem that the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner faces is the shortfall in his budget, which will lead to 250 police jobs being lost in 2016-17 as a result of police cuts, but it is made worse by the lack of certainty about future budgets, which makes rational planning difficult. Does the Home Secretary agree that PCCs could do their job better if their budget was set for the remainder of this Parliament, and what will she do about it?
Mrs May
The picture that the hon. Gentleman has set out of the South Yorkshire force is not one that I recognise. We have protected, if we take the police precept into account, police budgets across the period of the comprehensive spending review. I should have thought that he welcomed that, given that his Front-Bench team proposed that police budgets could be cut by 10%.