West Midlands Police (Funding)

Richard Burden Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for West Midlands Police.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I am grateful to have secured this debate.

I begin by expressing my thanks to the officers and staff of West Midlands police, who do an extraordinary job under immense pressure. As the largest force outside London, West Midlands police are the people who walk the beat and respond to some of the most diverse and challenging calls in the UK. The work and effort that they put in is especially remarkable given the funding cuts that they have already had to endure.

It is widely accepted that the Government’s approach to police funding over the past five years has seriously disadvantaged the big cities, where crime is often higher and more complex in nature. Our region has been hit harder than anywhere else. Over the past five years, disproportionate cuts have cost West Midlands police £126 million, which has led to one of the largest staff reductions in the country, in both numbers and proportion, with a 1,500 drop.

There are two big aspects of and reasons for such comparably high reductions: the region’s low council tax precept and the Government’s practice of formula damping. The council tax precept is the second lowest in the country, behind Northumbria, which means that West Midlands police is more reliant on central grant funding. A flat-rate cut in the central grant therefore has a disproportionate effect. Although central Government provide 86% of West Midlands police’s budget, for some forces the percentage can be as low as 49%.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is timely, to say the least. Does he agree that, with a 23% budget cut over the past four years and something like 5.8% of the overall distribution, rather than the 6.8% that other police authorities have been getting, West Midlands police has been discriminated against?

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend is right: West Midlands police really has been hit disproportionately. For example, compare West Midlands police with Surrey police, which has seen its total income fall by 12%. As my hon. Friend said, West Midlands police has already lost 23%, despite recorded crime having risen in the west midlands and fallen in Surrey. The cap on council tax rises, along with the huge costs associated with a referendum to go above that cap, leaves West Midlands police with no ability to mitigate cuts to the central Government grant in the same way that other forces sometimes can.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. It is an important issue that he is right to raise. I want to make two points. First, West Midlands police deserves to be congratulated on the 17% reduction in crime that I understand it has achieved. Secondly, will the hon. Gentleman say a little more about the extraordinary position in which we find ourselves, whereby the amount of the subvention from central Government is far higher than for any other force, apart from Northumberland, and the precept is very much lower? Most of our fellow citizens in similar cities—if one can say there are similar cities to Birmingham—are paying much more. That is an established fact, but it would be very helpful if the hon. Gentleman could discuss the options for remedying that.

[Richard Burden]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right—that is what I touched on earlier. The fact that we start with a lower council tax base means that we are more reliant on the central Government grant, so it is much harder to mitigate or to compensate for the effect of flat-rate cuts. I will come to crime levels, particularly the levels for different kinds of crimes, in a minute.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The issue is not only the level of income, but the huge additional burdens. For example, after the Metropolitan police, West Midlands police bears far and away the biggest share of the successful campaign against terrorism.

[Richard Burden]

My right hon. Friend is quite right about that. I will mention some of the specific demands on West Midlands police in a little while, but he is absolutely right to draw attention to counter-terrorism work.

In addition to the issue of council tax, the west midlands is also hit doubly hard by how formula damping works. In brutal terms, such damping prevents the region from receiving the funding allocation that the national formula says we need. This year, West Midlands police will receive £43 million less than the Government’s own formula says is required.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend says, under the existing system we are being robbed of £43 million that we should receive. In the past, the Minister has recognised that that is wrong. The Minister will not want to comment too much on his future plans today because of the ongoing consultation, but does my hon. Friend agree that at the very least we need an assurance that we will not lose, as has been speculated, a further £20 million under the plans that the Minister is going to put into action?

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend is right on both points. First, the impact of formula damping is a problem. Everyone seems to recognise that, but then nothing is done about it, so I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that. Secondly—I hope that the Minister will say something about this as well—the current consultation is also important, because some of the scenarios could hit the west midlands very hard indeed. I will say something about that in a little while. Suffice it to say that, if the funding was increased by just £10 million to compensate for the formula damping problem, that would still leave West Midlands police hit three times as hard as any other force, but we could recruit 450 additional police officers. Instead, £43 million is given to other forces. I understand the problems when formulae change and the effects have to be smoothed, but the reality is that other forces will get more funding than the Government’s formula says they need and West Midlands police will get less.

At this point, I want to note that in the individual force assessments for handling austerity, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary rated West Midlands police as outstanding. Credit for that is due first, and most importantly, to the officers and staff of West Midlands police. It is also important to mention the contributions of the late Bob Jones, the former police and crime commissioner, and David Jamieson, the current PCC, as well as that of Chief Constable Chris Sims, who will soon be retiring—we should thank him for his work during his time in the west midlands.

It is important that policy makers listen to people such as those I have just mentioned, because they are not crying wolf; they are raising legitimate concerns about the sustainability of the police service in the west midlands. Were the existing formula regime to continue, the force would expect to lose a further £100 million over the coming years. That would mean that a further 2,500 officers, police community support officers and staff would be set to go. At the end of the decade, West Midlands police would be expected to be smaller than when it was established back in 1974. In a moment, I will give more detail about the demands facing the force, which were mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar), but for now I will simply say that crime is often more complex and sophisticated now than it was in the ’70s. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that West Midlands police gets a fair deal to halt the huge drop in officer numbers that it is facing?

Given the categorical unfairness of the existing regime, I think that many colleagues present, from both the Government and the Opposition, were encouraged when the Government finally announced a review of the current formula. That should have been good news. The problem is that the Home Office has refused to publish any detailed exemplifications or impact assessments using its proposed models. We are already seeing the Government’s attempt to have an open discussion, which they say they wanted, starting to unravel. How can anybody offer an informed judgment to the consultation without the full information? As was reported in The Guardian at the weekend, even attempts to get figures via a freedom of information request have been rejected.

Thanks to the revelations published by the same newspaper, forces may still have time to review the implications of the new formula just before the consultation closes next Wednesday. Early analysis of the modelling suggests that there are several serious concerns about the Home Office’s approach that are likely to disadvantage our region even more. Based on modelling of the new funding formula by the Police and Crime Commissioners Treasurers’ Society, West Midlands police could lose more than 25% of its current funding. That is on top of the existing 40% cut, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) alluded. Before the end of the decade, that could leave the force with a budget smaller than the fixed costs for the officers it already has.

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way and is making an important speech. May I press him further about the budget and funding? Does he believe that the precept should rise or does he think that the Government should continue to give more of a subvention because we are providing a smaller precept locally? It is important to address that point, so that we have it clear and in the open.

[Richard Burden]

I will say two things in response to the right hon. Gentleman. First, tackling the question of the precept and the relative level of the council tax base is a long-term issue. It raises fundamental questions about how much it is legitimate to raise locally, as opposed to being dependent on central Government grants, when funding local government and other local services. That brings with it issues of how to compensate for particular levels of deprivation and so on, but he is right that it is a vital discussion, which goes beyond police funding.

In relation to this debate, however, we are where we are. We have a lower council tax base and are disproportionately dependent on central Government grants. Unless central Government formulae recognise that and respond to it, we will not be able to move forward.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. It does not really matter whether someone thinks that the precept should rise or not; the reality is that the Government have locked in a system that requires a referendum before it can rise, which is part of their intention to limit the rise. This is surely a spurious argument.

[Richard Burden]

That is saying perhaps a little more bluntly what I meant when I said that we are where we are. The Government must listen to the implications of their own policies.

My hon. Friend mentioned referendums. Let us say that we in the west midlands decided that, as the Government will not change their mind, despite our low council tax precept and so on, we should have a referendum. Where would that funding come from? It would come from the police budget, and we would lose even more as a consequence.

[Mr Mitchell]

I am stunned at the suggestion that I might have made a spurious point. It would be perfectly fair for the Minister, in seeking to confront the funding difficulties that we all agree exist, to ask whether senior politicians in Birmingham, such as the hon. Gentleman, believe that the Government should continue to give far more as a proportion because the precept in Birmingham is so low or whether senior local politicians believe that that needs to change and that the Government should not immediately assume that the wider taxpayer will provide an extra amount because the precept is so low. I am only trying to ensure that the hon. Gentleman is making a point of principle and is not simply asking the Minister for more money without expressing a view.

[Richard Burden]

I hope that it was clear from what I said at the outset that if a region has higher needs and a lower capacity to meet those needs locally, an important part of which is the level of the council tax precept, the Government should not ignore that problem. The formula should take account of that kind of thing, and the support should reflect the region’s needs and its lower capacity to raise money, which is partly a result of deprivation and the historical level of the council tax precept. As I said, if we decided to try to go for a higher council tax precept, the police force would have to pay for the referendum, which is patently unfair.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Bedfordshire decided to hold such a referendum in order to increase the council tax. That vote was lost and it cost Bedfordshire police some £600,000. It would be madness for the West Midlands police to try that even if it was desirable.

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the costs of referendums.

I am concerned that the Government’s proposals fail to take into account the multiple and complex demands on policing in the UK’s second largest city and the wider west midlands region. My constituency of Birmingham, Northfield, part of the Birmingham south local police unit, has recently seen a wave of high-profile incidents that have raised safety concerns among local residents. The reality is that those incidents are unrelated and exceptional—it is not a high-crime area—but the fact that they are taking place underlines the cross-cutting demands and sporadic pattern of many of the crimes with which large urban areas must contend. As a result, the question of police providing essential community reassurance is as important as crime detection and crime prevention.

Police community support officers are familiar faces of reassurance in many of our communities, mine being no exception. They play a vital role in deterring crime and building confidence among local people. Yet, despite their prominence and value on our streets, we look set to lose huge numbers of PCSOs. What is the Minister’s assessment of his Government’s pledge not to undermine front-line policing services such as PCSOs? Traffic police are another key, often overlooked front-line service. Specifically trained traffic officers are vital in deterring dangerous driving. Yet as their numbers have fallen in the past five years, casualties have risen dramatically nationally. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the Central Motorway Policing Group, for example, will maintain adequate staffing? Indeed, when considering job cuts to police officers, traffic officers and PCSOs, what assessment has he made of the required policing capability and capacity of each force area?

Across the west midlands—this goes back to the point of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) about crime levels—recorded incidents of violence against the person have increased by 10%, sexual offences by 18% and public order offences by 13% in the last year alone. West Midlands police is facing increasingly important challenges, such as radicalisation, child sexual exploitation and female genital mutilation. Safeguarding the most vulnerable in society and investigating and bringing perpetrators to justice are time and resource-intensive processes. When we consider the increases in many types of recorded crime, many of us will be aware that the real figure is probably much higher.

Critics of official crime statistics are well aware that many crimes, such as rape and sexual assault, regrettably go unreported. Others such as cybercrime and credit card fraud are simply not recorded properly. Crime is changing—not falling—and the Government must recognise that fair and proportionate funding for police forces is important.

In closing, I have two specific questions for the Minister. First, will he publish in full the data that his Department has used to develop the consultation proposals and will he then consider extending the consultation deadline to allow all respondents more time to review that information? Secondly, in the light of the disproportionate cuts in funding for West Midlands police, as found in the recent National Audit Office report, and given the growing local and national security demands in our region, will the Minister commit today to those things being taken into account in the new formula?

On Tuesday, the Select Committee on Home Affairs will take evidence about such matters, not only from the West Midlands police, but from other forces as well. For the Committee’s discussions and debates on Tuesday to be as informed as possible, I hope that the Minister will give at least some of that information today. He should be able to answer today the questions about the nature of the consultation, the basis for the figures arrived at and the work of the National Audit Office, without in any way jeopardising the consultation.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—