Police Funding

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Latham]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Why do police and crime commissioners need these enormous reserves when they talk about cuts all the time?

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Latham]

No, I will not.

Derbyshire was the only force nationally not to sign up for the outsourcing of back-office services, a measure that was proposed to increase efficiency and make savings during this so-called period of austerity. Clearly, that is a logical way to save money by being much more efficient. Similar-sized forces in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, which surround Derbyshire, have smaller reserves than Derbyshire.

Derbyshire police were saving up money to spend some of it—only some of it—on a new fire and police headquarters, which was desperately needed, but that was not all the money they kept. I was very interested to see that Essex has a police, fire and crime commissioner—the first in the country. I might recommend that if I thought it would be good for Derbyshire, but with the current incumbent, it certainly would not be good for Derbyshire because he would not know where his budget was.

The police and crime commissioner for Derbyshire clearly does not want to increase efficiency and make savings. It is clearly an ideological decision by this left-wing police and crime commissioner who does not want to change anything, because he wants to blame it all on the Conservative Government. There are lots of examples of waste: in the last budget, he proposed extra expenditure provisions—much more spending than has ever been spent before—on hotels and conferences. Now, why would that be when he says he cannot afford police officers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

During the election campaign I met a 20-year-old young man called Kelva Smith. He was in a front garden with a group of friends, and they had a chat with me as I was canvassing. We talked about crime, the lack of youth services, funding cuts and all the issues that young people are facing. If I am honest, Kelva and his friends were pretty pessimistic about my ability to do anything about any of these problems. On 5 March this year, Kelva was stabbed to death on the streets of Croydon. It turns out that Kelva and his friends were right to be pessimistic. I did not manage to change the situation for young people in Croydon. And now Kelva is dead and it is too late for him. I do not want us to fail another person, which is why I set up the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, why I am campaigning—along with so many colleagues across the political divide—for action on serious youth violence, and why I am working with every organisation I possibly can.

Our police are under pressure like never before in the face of knife crime and youth violence. In London, 80 people were stabbed to death last year. We saw eight deaths in a week of knife crime and gun crime just a couple of weeks ago, and the majority of cases are young people. Twenty-six people have been shot or stabbed to death in our capital so far this year—roughly one person every three days. This problem is not unique to London by any stretch. Knife crime across England and Wales grew by 21% last year, and almost all police forces are seeing an increase. There were 37,000 knife offences last year. Many MPs have joined the all-party parliamentary group, and are coming up to me quite regularly having realised that knife crime is a problem in their area. Knife-carrying in schools has rocketed, increasing by 42% over two years. The age of those carrying knives is also getting younger—some are 10, 11, 12 and 13 years old.

I sit on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which is doing an inquiry into the changing nature of policing. I understand the pressures that the police are under and the changing nature of crime. I also understand the need for efficiencies. It is quite insulting, I would suggest, to say that Labour Members do not believe in efficiencies. Of course we do—nobody wants to waste taxpayers’ money—but there is only so much one can do with efficiencies in the situation where the Met police have already made £600 million of savings and have to make another £400 million, where all but one of the police stations in Croydon has been closed, where our borough commander now has to lead three boroughs rather than one, and where eight out of 10 of our neighbourhood police officers have now gone.

Last week, I was in a secondary school where I talked to school-based police officers who were doing extraordinary work in helping people with issues of domestic violence and helping with children who went missing. Those police officers had built relationships with young people that meant that those young people trusted them. However, school-based police officers have been cut by 20% since 2010, and 13 police forces have no officers in schools at all.

I want to end with a basic plea: we need more funding so that we can have more police. It is a very simple situation. We are not trying to spin the facts. We need more police. It is too late for Kelva but it is not too late for other people.