Police Employer Pension Contributions

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern because I recognise the underlying concern, which has been expressed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and the Mayor, about encouraging people to come forward. There are issues around trust and confidence. That requires a robust police system to be there for people. We are increasingly seeing that in London, but we are also all aware of some of the underlying challenges with regard to trust in the police in certain communities, on which, to their great credit, the Metropolitan police have done a lot of work over many years to try to improve. This is not straightforward, but it is a real issue.

When I said that our priority is to increase the capacity of the police, that was not just rhetoric. Last year, as part of the police funding settlement, I stood at this Dispatch Box and took the first step on that journey—a step welcomed by David Thompson in the west midlands. It was not enough in his opinion, but he saw it for what it was: a first step in the right direction towards increasing the capacity of our police system with a police and funding settlement that has resulted in an additional £460 million of public money in our police system.

I also signalled last year our intention to do something similar for 2019-20, subject to the police meeting certain conditions on efficiency and productivity, again sending a signal of our intention to support investment in, not cuts to, policing. As a result, almost every police force in the country is recruiting additional officers. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) talked about the Met. As a fellow London MP, I share his concern, but I am sure he will also welcome the steps taken to recruit extra officers to the Met. I believe that 700 have been recruited through a combination of what was enabled under the funding settlement and the actions of the Mayor himself. As London MPs, we should recognise that the Met is recruiting additional officers at scale.

Alongside the funding settlement and the support for local forces is the additional investment that continues to be made from the centre, through the police transformation fund, in working with police to build their national capabilities. We know the importance of building those capabilities in a fragmented system. More money has gone in to uplift armed officer capability, to support the increasing number of detectives and to support important new facets of policing, such as the first national wellbeing programme for frontline officers, which I hope the Labour party will support, and the investment in helping the police to build something that is critical for their future: their digital capability. There is, then, additional investment in policing.

There are challenges though. I find myself in full agreement again with Labour MPs over the importance of neighbourhood policing, which has come under considerable pressure in recent years, as the independent inspectorate made clear. There has been an inconsistent picture in neighbourhood policing across the country. I hope the Labour party will support what the police are doing now to agree new guidelines on what represents best practice in neighbourhood policing. The majority of forces are now adopting that best practice, meaning we will be developing a much more consistent model of neighbourhood policing.

With that comes a growing emphasis on crime prevention. I agree absolutely with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East. We cannot afford a police force that is reactive, but the police are increasingly concerned about becoming reactive. We all surely understand the importance of crime prevention. It is always smarter to invest in the fence at the top of the cliff than in the ambulance at the bottom. With that additional capacity and rebuilding of the neighbourhood policing model, I hope and expect to see a reassertion of traditional police strengths in problem solving.

I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about knife crime. Of course, there is a need for a robust policing pillar for that. It needs to be a combination of robust policing and prevention work to tackle the root causes. He understands, as does everyone, all the lessons from places that have beaten down on this problem in the past. It is that combination that is important and which I see being put in place through the serious violence strategy. I thank him also for recognising the importance of the additional funding for counter-terrorism policing in the Budget. We all understand the importance of that, and I am delighted to hear that the Labour party supports it.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) is no longer in her place—[Interruption.] I am so sorry. She has moved, which is really unhelpful for Ministers at the Dispatch Box—[Laughter.]—but I am delighted she is still here. She rightly raised the very important issue of mental health. All MPs engaged closely with their forces will know the growing frustration and unease among our police offices at how long they spend supporting people with mental health issues in their communities, so I hope the Labour party will welcome the additional investment in mental health locally. I am clear in my mind that one of the dividends from that additional investment must be a reduction in demand on the police, and I have made that point directly to the Secretary of State for Health.

The point I am labouring is that, although there is a lot of talk about cuts, in fact the Government have recognised that the demands on policing have changed, and, bearing in mind the limited resources and our concern for how much tax our constituents are able and prepared to pay, we have taken steps to increase investment in policing. With the £460 million, we are investing £1 billion more in our police system than we were three years ago.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The Minister says that he has thought again about cuts. Does he not accept that the Government’s cutting more than 20,000 police officers led to the destruction of neighbourhood policing in the first place?

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking me on to my next point, which is a very uncharacteristically tribal one. I say with great respect to Labour Members who have stood up and talked with great pride about the amount that the last Labour Government invested in public services and policing that the honest, hard truth is that, as ever, they ran out of money. The Labour party likes to talk about cuts having consequences, but the frank truth is that cuts are themselves the consequences of the legacy of a Government in which, I may say, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East served with great distinction as a Minister. The biggest legacy of that Government is the biggest peacetime budget deficit in the history of this country. Yet again, my party had to intervene to sort out a mess, which required radical action and tough decisions.

Let me make another point to the hon. Lady. There are two reasons—about which, again, we need to be frank—for the fact that, back in 2010, it was possible to reduce police budgets. First, demand on the police was stable at that time, and secondly, there was cross-party consensus in the House that the police system was inefficient. Even Andy Burnham, sitting opposite where I stand now, was quite prepared to admit that there was inefficiency in the police system that needed to be addressed, and it has been addressed.