Public Disorder

Richard Burden Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The specific point that I was making was about the concern that is often expressed, and was expressed to me over the past couple of days, as to whether under the Human Rights Act “Wanted” pictures, as it were, could be published. I wanted specifically to send a message to police forces and local authorities that they should go ahead and do that. On the Human Rights Act more generally, my hon. Friend knows that we have plans to reform it at source under the European convention on human rights.

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

In relation to Birmingham and the west midlands, may I add my tribute to the work of the police, the emergency services and local authority workers, and also to the active citizenship shown by the broom brigades and the profound dignity of Tariq Jahan last night? However, I ask the Prime Minister to look again at the police budget figures he mentioned. He mentioned 6%, but the cuts amount to a lot more than that for metropolitan areas because of the way the formulae work. Will he look again at that, as I think he may be operating on the basis of duff figures?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me again pay tribute to what was done in Birmingham; it was a model of bringing communities together, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman played a part in that.

The point I am making is that police funding comes from both the grant and the precept, and if we make normal assumptions about the precept, what we are asking for is on average a 6% cash reduction over four years. I do not think that that is impossible while keeping up police visibility, and a growing number of police chiefs are agreeing with that. For the hon. Gentleman’s West Midlands force, we are basically taking the funding back to its 2007 level. From the way he is speaking, people would think we were taking it back to the 1987 level.