Police Grant Report

Debate between Ruth George and Diane Abbott

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

There can be no question but that the biggest indictment of this Government’s record on law and order is their long-standing failure to fund the police properly. Sadly, that is as true of this year’s funding allocation as it is of any other year’s. I have to say to the Home Secretary, in the kindest possible manner, that he is brazen in expecting Opposition Members to follow him into the Lobby on this funding settlement. We would be less than responsible if we voted for one that is patently inadequate. It is not just Members on the Opposition Benches who are saying that but ordinary police officers. The chair of the Police Federation, John Apter, said:

“This appears to be a quick fix. A sticking plaster solution that injects extra money in the short-term, but one which sees the burden falling unfairly on local council tax payers.”

Senior police officers think that this settlement is inadequate. The president of the Police Superintendents Association, Gavin Thomas, has said:

“Whilst I welcome this injection of funding, it is still far short of what the service requires to effectively meet the challenges of 21st century policing.”

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. In Derbyshire, my own area, the Government’s increase in the grant does not even meet the increase in the police pension costs. There is a shortfall of £400,000, which has to be met by council tax payers before they even start to contribute towards the extra policing that we so desperately need, and which officers on the frontline need to help them combat the stress that the Home Secretary mentioned.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes an important point on behalf of her constituents in Derbyshire.

The West Midlands police and crime commissioner says publicly what many PCCs say privately—that this Government funding does not come anywhere near to covering what the force requires just to stand still.

Police Funding

Debate between Ruth George and Diane Abbott

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will come to what chief constables all over the country are saying later in my speech. In his statement on police funding on 31 January, the Minister stated:

“In 2018-19, we will provide each police and crime commissioner (PCC) with the same amount of core Government grant funding as in 2017-18.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 25WS.]

He said “the same amount”, but it is a freeze in direct Government funding. When inflation is close to 3%, it amounts to a cut in real terms, because the flat-cash settlement does not cover the unfunded pay rise, pension costs, the apprenticeship levy and rising fuel costs. To say blithely that it is the same amount, as though it is not actually a cut in real terms, is quite disappointing.

I want to say a few words on counter-terrorism and to make the point that Ministers sometimes do not want to talk about—that counter-terrorism and community policing are inextricably linked. As somebody reminded us earlier, it was Sadiq Khan who said:

“For every £1 of counter terrorism funding spent in response to an incident, around £2 is spent on necessary additional non-counter terrorism activity, which has to come from wider policing budgets.”

Community policemen and women are on the frontline of counter-terrorism, so to talk about narrowly defined counter-terrorism funding and not understand that community policing on the ground is the frontline of counter-terrorism is, again, disappointing.

The effects of these cuts on the ground have been set out by my colleagues my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Ruth George), for Redcar (Anna Turley) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), and my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq)—who made a very moving speech—for Leigh (Jo Platt), for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya). They talked from personal experience, but in closing, let me remind Ministers what senior officers have said.

The assistant chief constable from Northumbria, Ged Noble, recently told the police and crime panel that total crime in his area had risen by 109% since 2014 and violent crime was up by over 200%. The Bedfordshire chief constable said:

“We do not have the resources to keep residents safe.”

[Ruth George]

Does my right hon. Friend not feel it is a sign of the significance that the Government attach to our brave police officers and the victims of crime all over this country that the Home Secretary has not even been present at any point during this important debate?

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It will have been observed by the community and by policemen and women that the Home Secretary was not in this debate at any point.

I was talking about what senior officers have said. The Bedfordshire chief constable, Jon Boutcher, said:

“My officers cannot cope with the demand and no-one seems to be listening.”

The Minister quoted Cressida Dick, so let me give him another quote:

“We’ve got emergency calls going up, we’ve got crime going up nationally and in London…Police chiefs will do all they can to protect the public from terrorism. We will make choices about what we prioritise and where we invest. Some of these choices may be difficult and unpalatable to the public”.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council criticised the Government’s funding settlement for

“failing to fully meet the level of investment identified.”

But perhaps the most damning verdict is from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which said in its recent report:

“About a quarter of forces are all too often overwhelmed by the demand they face, resulting in worrying backlogs of emergency jobs”.

The picture is clear. Despite Tory bluster, the police are overstretched, they are attempting to deal with more crime and more complex crime, and this Government are providing them with fewer resources in real terms to do that. We heard tonight about some of our poorest communities feeling the need to pay for private protection. We saw in the constabulary report that policemen and women are responding to 999 calls the next day. That is happening on this Government’s watch. Instead of accusing us of shroud waving, they should address the real concerns among policemen and women and in communities about this Government’s failure to fund policing properly.

Drugs Policy

Debate between Ruth George and Diane Abbott

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We cannot have a meaningful strategy on drug abuse without looking at the question of resources, but I would be the first to say that it is more complex than simply providing more money.

To give an overview of what local authorities are facing, Barnsley cut its drug and alcohol service by more than a third between 2015-16 and 2016-17. Some services will be unavailable and key drugs practitioners will be made redundant. Staffordshire County Council was forced to make cuts of 45% to its drug and alcohol treatment budget over the past two years, due to its local commissioning group pulling the expected £15 million of NHS funding. Middlesbrough Council, which sadly has one of the highest rates of death from heroin overdoses in the country, cut its budget by £1 million last year.

When the Home Office announced those policies, it correctly said that for every £1 spent on public health, £2.50 is saved. However, instead of helping local authorities to follow that logic, the Government have obliged them to pursue short-term cuts. Some local authorities have tried, and some have been particularly innovative in seeking efficiencies in their public health budgets, but the reality is that too many are looking at significant reductions in services, and some are even privatising services. When it comes to public health, the Government talk a good talk but do not follow through with the resources. I note with dismay that the strategy includes no mention of providing more resources to local authorities, which after all are on the frontline of any strategy against drug use.

[Ruth George]

Bearing in mind the figures that my right hon. Friend has set out—for every £1 spent on public health, £2.50 is saved for the public purse—does she agree that the overall cuts of £85 million to local authorities’ public health budgets are a false economy that are not serving our communities, or even the Exchequer?

[Ms Abbott]

I think that the public health cuts were disastrous. The Treasury, in an extraordinary example of short-term thinking, clawed back the funds that had been promised. The King’s Fund has shown that local authorities in England are being forced to spend more than 5% less on public health initiatives this year than in 2014, and tackling drug misuse in adults will face a 5.5% cut of more than £22 million. Until the Government put their money where their mouth is on the drugs strategy, they will have to accept that some stakeholders remain sceptical.

There was an interesting discussion about alcohol earlier in the debate. Ministers seem to struggle with the notion that alcohol is actually a drug, but the truth is that in absolute terms alcohol causes more harm than any illegal drug. It is shocking that the strategy managed only two paragraphs on alcohol, which is a major killer in Britain today. Professor Ian Gilmore, chair of Alcohol Health Alliance UK, has said that

“we also need a dedicated strategy on alcohol which recognises the breadth of harm done by alcohol. In the UK alcohol is responsible for over 26,000 deaths per year, over 1 million hospital admissions per year, and…alcohol cost the UK economy between £27—£52 billion in 2016.”

In 2015, there were 8,000 casualties caused by drink-driving alone. Professor Ian Gilmore continued:

“The time has come for the Government to take an evidence-based approach to controlling the supply of and reducing the demand for a legal drug which is sold on virtually every street corner, sometimes at pocket money prices.”