Metropolitan Police Service

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is quite right, and she has been working hard on county lines. As she will know, we put significant funding into the Met police and four other forces to do that fantastic work. I referred in my statement to some areas of the Met police that are world-beating and of astounding performance, and one is the work on county lines. We will do our best to make sure that the commissioner selected has the right idea about reform, but I will also take a close interest in the engagement process with the inspectorate and make sure that that works accordingly.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

In 1829, the Metropolitan police was formed and London had a population of 1.8 million. Now it has a population of about 9.5 million. Is the Met police either too big to fail or too big to succeed, or has London become just too geographically large to police on the model that it has today?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend raises some interesting questions, but I believe that the Metropolitan police as currently constructed is capable of policing London appropriately and can and does show some astonishing performance in some particular areas of its activity. Certainly the work we have been doing, for example, on violence and knife crime, where we have been leaning in and providing significant extra resource, will I hope pay dividends over the years to come. We should all constantly pay attention to the structure and effectiveness of those police forces, and I am afraid that the report we have seen today tells us that there is room for improvement.