Policing (England and Wales)

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

Like others, I first wish to express my thanks to all Bedfordshire police officers and staff for all that they do on the front- line, keeping our communities safe, particularly in the face of significant challenges thrown up by the pandemic, which come hot on the heels of a decade of austerity that saw police numbers cut and violent crime rise.

Today, I want to raise the issues already raised by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) about the funding provided to Bedfordshire police in the police grant report, which is a continuation of the structurally flawed funding model that has left Bedfordshire police under-resourced for years. The force has struggled to balance the budget at the same time as protecting our communities, due to inadequate central Government funding. Since 2018-19, it has had to rely on yearly, one-off special grants to tackle serious crime in order to ensure that it does not overspend. Short-term funding arrangements inhibit our police’s ability to plan ahead to support and protect our communities. Just last year, Crest Advisory found that total police demand will continue to increase over the next three years, at the same time as the service continues to be underfunded and understaffed. Stakeholders across Luton and Bedfordshire—this is cross-party and includes those in non-political roles—do not think that the funding formula is fit for purpose. It needs to be reviewed and amended to better reflect data on actual recorded crime levels and levels of threat.

I know that the Government recognise that, but by choosing to press ahead with allocating the grant under the current formula they are failing to properly resource Bedfordshire police to tackle the nature and quantity of crime that we face. Although Bedfordshire police’s budget has increased, it has increased only at the same rate as those of other forces and is therefore still disproportionately underfunded.

Bedfordshire is funded as a rural county, but with two major towns, Luton and Bedford, it suffers from crime typically found in metropolitan city areas. Our county also—normally—has the fifth busiest airport in the country, a mainline railway and the M1, all of which fall within my constituency. As has already been outlined, Bedfordshire has more active organised crime groups than Norfolk and Suffolk put together, and more than Kent and Essex, and more Bedfordshire-based organised crime groups have links to firearms than do those in Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk put together. The drugs supply out of Bedfordshire to other areas of the country is the fourth highest in England and Wales, and in many cases is the origin of county lines crime.

Bedfordshire police is dedicated to maximising public safety, but at the moment it is being done on a shoestring. Rather than introducing a fair and equitable funding formula, Ministers have chosen to heap the burden on to hard-pressed local residents by raising the police precept to £15 for band D properties. This regressive form of taxation will mean that the most deprived communities, those with fewer band D properties, will get the least. There should be no winners and losers when it comes to public safety. In Bedfordshire, the increase in the precept will raise £6.9 million, but it is economically illiterate to expect local residents to foot the bill at the same time as their incomes and living standards have been devastated by the economic fallout from the pandemic. Short-term, one-off grants and the passing of the burden on to residents must stop. The Government must take ownership of this issue and implement an urgent review of the funding formula to ensure that Bedfordshire’s police service receives the central Government support it needs. I hope that the Minister recognises that although Bedfordshire’s police force is under-represented in funding, this debate is over-represented by Members from across Luton and Bedfordshire to make that point.