Public Disorder

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Ken Livingstone was very clear about the need for people to take responsibility for their actions and for those involved in recent events to be punished. He was very clear about there being no excuse.

I have to say to the Home Secretary that we still do not have an answer. In the discussions I have had with the Met police, they have expressed concern that the additional cost of the extra policing required as a result of this criminality will come not from the Treasury reserve, but from their own reserve. Like the reserves of many police authorities across the country, the Met reserve is extremely stretched as a result of the police cuts. If this situation continues over many days, I am deeply concerned that the Met may end up having either to reduce the level of policing on the streets before it is ready to do so or to make cuts elsewhere in its budgets on routine policing. The Home Secretary has still not given any answer as to what she would do to support the Met police and other police forces. She really does need to think again on this and provide more information to the House, and to police forces and communities across the country about what support they will get.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I must, I am afraid, take the right hon. Lady back to what other members of her party have said, and seek clarity on that. The hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) tweeted that

“the Tories are back alright. Why is it the Tories never take responsibility for the consequences of their party’s disastrous policies”,

with the hash tag “tottenham”, but the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has said:

“Cuts don’t turn you into a thief.”

Which of them does the right hon. Lady agree with?

[Yvette Cooper]

I noticed the hon. Gentleman’s nerves when holding his piece of paper to read out what was clearly another Whips’ question, but I say to hon. Members that serious issues need to be addressed in this House about what the Government are doing, and what this House should be doing, to address the serious criminality that is taking place.

Let us deal with the wider problems this raises about resources for our police and the views that are being expressed to us—and, I am sure, to Members on the Government Benches in their constituencies—about the scale and pace of the policing cuts across the country. The Prime Minister claimed that he was making only 6% cuts, but he used cash figures, not real figures, when he knows that inflation is high and that the cuts set out in the spending review—according to the Treasury’s figures, not mine—were for a 20% cut in the Government’s police budget. The independent Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary report makes it clear that 16,000 police officers are going as a result—the equivalent of every one of the police officers on London’s streets last night will go.

Any of us who were on London’s streets last night will know quite how many police officers were on the streets of our capital. We have heard the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary tell us that front-line, visible policing will not be hit, but, with respect, it is being hit already. The HMIC has confirmed that front-line officers will be lost this year. The Prime Minister himself used a figure of 7,000 officers in back-office jobs, but 16,000 will be cut.

We agree that the police need to make savings and efficiencies, that they need to do more to get police officers out on to the streets and that they can sustain sensible reductions in their budgets, but the cuts set out by the Government go too far, too fast, and we do not agree that now is the time to cut 16,000 police officers across the country.