Police Funding: North-east England

Debate between Sarah Jones and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on securing this debate. I will start as he did by paying tribute to our police officers and police staff, who work tirelessly in what can be incredibly difficult circumstances, and who sometimes have to pay the ultimate price. I think all hon. Members have paid tribute to PC Blades, PC Clough and PC Turnbull, all of whom died this year. Their deaths have all been an incredible loss to their families, but also to the policing community and their wider communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) talked about Jess and how young she was. I have met her father a couple of times now. He was a police officer and had just retired when Jess became one. That whole community has been devastated. At all three of those funerals I saw an entire community coming out to support policing, which was incredibly powerful to see. I know that there has been a struggle in terms of people’s confidence in policing. There are challenges that we are dealing with, but in those communities I saw a community supporting their police officers and giving them the respect they deserve.

I probably have the best job in Government. Working with policing is an unbelievable privilege and a joy, but standing here and listening to hon. Members talk about the struggles they are facing in their communities is very humbling and difficult. I hear the message they are telling me loud and clear. Since the A66 crash and the awful incidents that followed, I have met the police and crime commissioner or the chief constable five or six times, and hon. Members as well. I have heard loud and clear, not least from my colleague in the Home Office, the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), about the challenges that are being faced in people’s communities. I want hon. Members to know that I hear those challenges; that is important to say.

I will touch on a couple of topics. The first one is the funding formula, which everybody has leant into in this debate. The funding formula used to be based on many of the measures that Members have mentioned: deprivation rates, crime rates, rurality and ethnicity. A whole raft of indicators went into the police funding formula and previous calculations. When the Conservatives began austerity, they took the decision to cut all forces by the same proportion. That was the point at which the relationship between funding and all the different factors that go into the funding formula was cut. It was still there, in that the proportions were increased—or decreased, in that case—equally, but over time, what was originally the funding formula has lost its meaning, and it has lost its connection to the factors that need to go into determining funding. We are reviewing that. I am spending a lot of time thinking about that process. It is complicated, and we have to get it right. There are lots of different parts to it.

I ask Members to imagine a graph of a certain crime type—let us say violence against women and girls—plotted against an indicator of crime. We map all parts of the country and see what the line tells us. For example, it is clear from the graphs that there is a link between violent crime and educational attainment, so educational attainment has to be an indicator that is part of how funding formulas are worked out.

A lot of work has to go into that. The police put a lot of work into solving crime, as well as their other work. Police spend more than 50% of their time dealing with things other than crime, such as missing people and people with mental health problems. They are working on things that are not what people might perceive as crime. We have to think about that work.

Hon. Members mentioned fairness in relation to council tax and the precept. We have seen our colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government go through that process, to the advantage of some and to the disadvantage of others. There are always winners and losers in a funding formula review. It is a complicated process.

[Andy McDonald]

The Minister says that it is a complicated process, but the graph that I am sure she has seen showing the changes in full-time equivalents between 2010 and 2025 is stark, and there is political bias built into that. We on the Labour Benches are saying that that urgently needs to be corrected. It is an inequitable, unfair formula that visits badly on the constituencies in the north-east of England, and it is that that needs attention. We cannot wait months for the formula to be recalibrated to come up with a better answer. The need is now.

There is one point on which I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers): if we carry on as we are, we will be losing more officers in Cleveland, so the need is urgent. It is not a matter for months; we have to do this in days. If the Minister needs any further information from Victoria Fuller, the chief constable of Cleveland police, I am sure it can be provided, but we need that progress immediately.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend and I have had several conversations on this matter in recent times. Of course, I have talked to Victoria, I am well aware of all the statistics and I understand what my hon. Friend is saying. What I am saying is that we are reviewing the funding formula, and it will be fair.

The funding for the year ahead will be allocated and it will not be under the new funding formula. At the moment, we are going through a process to which the chief constable, Matt Storey and all the police chiefs and PCCs from across England and Wales are party. They can come to us while we allocate funding for next year and tell us their exceptional financial situation or exceptional circumstances. Of course, we are having those conversations with colleagues across the north-east, as all Members present would expect.

Although the funding formula will come with the reforms, we are looking right now at what we will do about the exceptional funding requests that people are making across the country. That is the second thing I wanted to say: there is a process, and we are looking at the funding for the next funding year, as well as reforming the funding formula, which will come later.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Sarah Jones and Andy McDonald

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft, who I suspect will speak to it later. I agree that in many cases honour-based abuse is perpetrated not by a single individual but by an extended family or other group of persons. The challenge we have with the amendment is that the definition in the Bill adopts the usual legislative conventions whereby references to the singular include the plural unless otherwise indicated. Therefore, the statutory definition already applies where abuse is perpetrated by more than one person. However, we do want to develop the statutory guidance so that that is completely clear for everybody.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember our discussion, and I hope that she can help me. Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC was appointed to lead an independent review of laws on public order and hate crime. The review was also to consider the laws around protest, and we were hopeful that we would have that. I am not aware that the review has concluded, so perhaps my hon. Friend can tell us. If it has not concluded, why are we legislating before that?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend, who I know feels strongly about this issue, as do many others—I very much respect that position. I met him a few months ago, when the review had just started. The review has yet to conclude, but it will do so in the coming months. The work that Lord Macdonald is undertaking is quite substantial, and I know, having received updates on what he is doing and who he is talking to, that it is wide and is taking a bit longer than expected, but that is in order to get it right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) will know that the cumulative disruption amendment was announced by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack. Perhaps we will come to this more in closing the debate, but I think there is a lack of understanding in some quarters—I do not mean my hon. Friend—about the nature of that amendment. To be clear, sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 empower senior police officers to impose conditions on processions and on public assemblies respectively. They can impose conditions only under certain criteria to prevent serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption. We are not changing sections 12 or 14. At the moment, the police can consider cumulative disruption when looking at whether a protest should have conditions imposed on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

Yes, he is a shadow Minister—I am very happy to give him his correct title.

Britain is a country that will not tolerate hate, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth said. She spoke about aggravated offences relating to disability, trans and sex, and bringing those into line with the existing aggravated offences. That will support victims, and not just in terms of potential sentencing and justice; it will mean that victims can access more support, which I very much welcome, and I am glad that she does too.

Turning to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the issue of the glorification of terrorism—oh, I see he is not in his place; I will come back to that issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) has been doing so much work on a number of different areas, not least all of the Lords amendments that relate to porn. She gave a really powerful speech about how pain for women is increasingly perceived as equalling pleasure for men, and she spoke of the need to tackle that in many different ways, because sexualised violence online can become violence in real life. I am glad that she welcomed the step-incest amendments, which are absolutely right, as well as those on people trying to look like children, which she called “barely legal content”. I heard her message about proactively verifying age and consent and about bringing in the timetable to deliver that as soon as we can.

My hon. Friend also talked about honour-based abuse. We understand and agree with her, as well as other hon. Members who raised the importance of realising that often it is not a single crime but involves a whole group of people. We need to ensure that is clear in all the training done on identifying and responding to this form of abuse. Therefore, alongside the statutory guidance, we are developing additional free learning modules for professionals who work with victims and perpetrators of honour-based abuse. That includes a general module as well as dedicated modules on multi-agency responses. Together, those modules will strengthen statutory professionals’ ability to recognise the signs and to manage cases appropriately and safely in practice. I hope that is reassuring to my hon. Friend.

I turn to Lords amendment 312, which many hon. Members spoke to. There are a number of things to say on our cumulative disruption amendment. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), who talked powerfully about his position, which I respect. I agree that protest and the right to protest is part of the lifeblood of the Labour movement, and that progress is rarely—if ever—handed down without first having been campaigned for. I understand his concern, and the concern of everyone in the House, that we balance the right to protest with the impact of protest. We have had many debates on that in this place over the past few years.

The Home Secretary asked Lord Macdonald to review public order legislation and hate crime legislation, because we have had lots of different pieces of legislation and there is a need to take a holistic look at that to see whether it is right. Lord Macdonald has not reported yet; he will do so within a few months, and we very much look forward to what he has to say. I hope that when he does report we can consider his recommendations in this place and discuss all his findings together.

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Given what she has just said, would it not have been wiser to await the outcome of the review, so that we could have seen Lord Macdonald’s view of the entire scene before taking yet further legislative measures that will move the dial even further? Would that not have been the right course of action?

[Sarah Jones]

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point, which we have discussed before. As he knows, the announcement that the amendment would be made was given by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack and the protest that followed. It has not come from nowhere; it has been debated and suggested by policing colleagues for some time. The Government’s view was that this Bill is a vehicle we could use to introduce this legislation, and that we should take the opportunity to do so. I know that he disagrees with that decision, but we made it because we feel this is a necessary step, given the situation in which we find ourselves.

I want to be really clear again about what the amendment does and does not do. Marches can only be banned in very, very specific circumstances, as happened with the al-Quds march recently—the first time a march had been banned since 2012. The amendment will make no difference to that whatsoever. It will make no difference to what march can and cannot be banned. An assembly cannot be banned at all, as there is no legislative basis for that, so again, the amendment will make no difference at all.

It already is the case, and it has been since 1986 when the Public Order Act was introduced, that the police can consider cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions on a protest. A condition could be the time that the protest is allowed to take place, the route that the protest can go down or the number of people allowed on that protest. Since 1986, the police have had the ability to consider cumulative disruption when they look at whether they should impose conditions. The amendment means that they have to look at and consider the impact of cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions.

[Sarah Jones]

My point was that the basis of cumulative disruption has been in the law from the Public Order Act 1986. In terms of the definition, the police use their discretion on the definition—that is absolutely the case—and they have done so since 1986, when they were able to consider that.

I will say a couple of things on that basis. The police have to balance the rights of freedom of assembly and speech that are enshrined in the European convention on human rights—they have to do that. When they are considering what they do with protests, they have to balance and consider those rights, and if they are going to impose conditions, that has to be done under specific areas, which might be serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community. When and if this Bill is passed and we move forward, I will commit to working with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to make sure that the guidance is as clear as it can be. However, the definition of cumulative disruption is just its natural meaning, and the police have had that power since 1986.

[Andy McDonald]

May I trouble the Minister one more time?

[Sarah Jones]

Yes.

[Andy McDonald]

Just on that, if she is going to consult with the College of Policing and others, where is the role for this House to have its voice in that discussion? There are many people here who would like to positively input into that discussion.

[Sarah Jones]

The role of this House is to debate, which is exactly what we are doing now. I listened, for example, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who talked about his experience with the Metropolitan police in recent times and his sense that he had lost confidence with the way that they were making decisions on protests. I hear all those things and am happy to have more conversations. I am sure that the police would be happy to as well.

I will just say—this does not have an impact on anything that I think about what the law should be on protests—that there has been a 600% increase in the number of protests over the last couple of years. There has been a huge increase in the number of people protesting and the physical ability of the police to just deal with that in terms of resources is not insubstantial. They spend a huge amount of time on this, as we all know, and our neighbourhood officers are often abstracted. That is right and proper—I am not suggesting otherwise—but it is a challenge for the police, particularly in the big urban parts of our country, to have to manage the impact of these protests.

To repeat, the cumulative disruption amendment does not change the guardrails of the powers to impose conditions. It does not change anything about the need to balance the right to protest in the European convention on human rights with the Public Order Act. None of those things will change. What is changing is that we are saying that the police will consider cumulative disruption, rather than that they can consider cumulative disruption.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sarah Jones and Andy McDonald

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman highlights an awful crime that was very much overlooked by the previous Government. We are changing the system, so that the £200 rule—whereby crimes would not be investigated if the goods stolen were worth less than £200—is scrapped. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris) championed in opposition, we are bringing in a new offence of assaulting a shopworker. This issue needs a really targeted response, and we know that a lot of local police are working closely with the Co-op group and others to make sure we target the prolific offenders who are responsible for a vast amount of these crimes.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

The Government have tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would create sweeping powers to impose conditions on public protests based on cumulative disruption. Can the Minister set out to the House what that amendment means by serious disruption to a community? How will this be determined and measured, and how will these powers be made subject to democratic scrutiny?

[Sarah Jones]

That would probably take longer to answer than the amount of time I have for a topical question, but I am very happy to speak to my hon. Friend about this issue. The definition of serious disruption is not changing; the amendment deals with the circumstances in which a police force can put conditions on a protest while not banning it. I am very happy to have more conversations with my hon. Friend about this.

Police Reform

Debate between Sarah Jones and Andy McDonald

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The announcement today is on police and crime commissioners, which will not change those boundaries.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I whole- heartedly agree that the public have not bought into this model, but that does not mean there has not been some excellent work done by PCCs and their staff with great commitment and professionalism. Will she join me in thanking Matt Storey, the Cleveland police and crime commissioner, for the sterling work he has done in engaging with young people. She heard from some of those young people just two weeks ago, and the voice of youngsters is being heard in Cleveland. Could she also say something about the services commissioned by PCCs, especially in the areas of sexual assault, domestic violence and drug rehabilitation? People today will be in shock about this decision, and they will want some reassurance that their good practice will not be lost in the transition,

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that thoughtful question, and I join him in paying tribute to Matt Storey. I met him, and a group of young people he brought to see me, who were also incredibly thoughtful, and he is doing some excellent work. He points to the challenges of transitioning all these services. We are already learning lessons because, where the mayoral model is coming in, we are already transitioning from the police and crime commissioner model to the deputy mayor model, and we are learning as we go. There are statutory responsibilities for commissioning, such as victim services, and he mentioned sexual abuse and serious and domestic violence services as well. We will ensure that those statutory functions are maintained, and we are already talking to local authorities, our PCCs and other Departments to ensure we get that exactly right. I welcome any thoughts from hon. Members on that.

British Steel

Debate between Sarah Jones and Andy McDonald

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

I wholeheartedly congratulate my hon. Friend on her sterling work and very much welcome her statement. No doubt she will remember that on 11 April, the Leader of the Opposition said that in government she had negotiated a steel modernisation plan. The next day, when the Government brought in emergency legislation to save Scunthorpe, she said she was still negotiating a deal when her boss called the snap general election. There was never any agreement for an electric arc furnace on Teesside, as she claimed, as much as me and my colleagues support the concept. Will the Minister confirm that it was the Conservative party that presided over the end of virgin steelmaking in Redcar and Port Talbot, and that it would have done the same at Scunthorpe were it not for the Labour Government? Will she also confirm that if the private sector will not sufficiently invest, the Government will maintain British Steel through public ownership and use their public procurement strategy to make the company sufficiently profitable?

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition confirmed on the “Today” programme this morning that the Conservative party policy is for an electric arc furnace at Scunthorpe or Scunthorpe and Teesside—it is unclear—which would have cost nearly twice as much as the existing proposals, without any mention of primary steelmaking. I understand that the official Opposition’s position is that they are not in favour of retaining primary steelmaking capacity in the UK.