Community Policing

Debate between Tim Farron and Ed Davey

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for community policing.

Policing in our communities and neighbourhoods is

“the cornerstone of the policing model in England and Wales”—

not my words, but the judgment of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in March this year.

Good community policing responds to the needs of local people with a consistent, visible police presence; it involves working in partnership to gain trust, gather intelligence and get to the heart of a community’s concerns, in order to prevent and fight crime. Yet cuts to community policing across our country have stretched most local police forces to their limit at a time when crime is rising significantly. My constituency has lost more than 40 police officers since May 2015, so it should not surprise us that last year, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary found that

“local policing is the area of operational policing that shows the greatest decline in performance”;

that is linked to the budget cuts. For those reasons, I feel that Ministers need to be held to account for the growing crisis in community policing.

I have three arguments to make, which I hope the Minister will address in turn. First, it is clear that crime is rising. We need to recognise that fact and act. Secondly, the falling police budgets were set before the emerging trend of rising crime took hold; the facts have changed, however, and so must police budgets. Thirdly, a good part of any significant increase in police funding must go to community policing, given its vital role as the cornerstone of policing.

First, I want to persuade the Minister to accept in this Chamber that crime is rising, and alarmingly so. There can be no dispute about recorded crime, which is up 13% in the year to June. What should worry us in particular, however, are the categories of crimes with the largest recorded rises: the rise of 19% in violent crime, of 8% in murder and manslaughter, of 26% in knife crime, of 27% in gun crime and of 19% in sexual offences. Recorded crime is what the police have to deal with, and what they have to investigate and clear up, and it drives their activity, so when Ministers counter accusations of rising crime by pointing to the crime survey, which is the other main way that we assess the level of crime, they should be careful.

While it is true that the crime survey suggests that crime last year fell, Britain’s top statisticians at the Office for National Statistics make interesting comments about how we should interpret the mixed signals from recorded crime and the crime survey. John Flatley, who heads on crime statistics and analysis for the ONS, said on the release of crime stats last month:

“Today’s figures suggest that the police are dealing with a growing volume of crime. While improvements made by police forces in recording crime are still a factor in the increase, we judge that there have been genuine increases in crime—particularly in some of the low incidence but more harmful categories.”

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Will he acknowledge that the police themselves are often victims of crime? Recently I was in my local police station in Kendal; three officers were on long-term sickness because they had been sent single-handed to dangerous incidents, when normally they would have been sent as a pair. The cuts in police numbers meant that those officers could be sent only one at a time, and they are off sick as a consequence. Last year alone, 5,000 hours were lost to police sickness in Cumbria. Does he agree that that paints a picture of the police bearing the brunt of the rise in crime and the reduction in resource?

[Sir Edward Davey]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As the number of police officers declines, they have to work overtime and, as he described, put themselves in greater danger, which is not acceptable.

When Mr Flatley, the ONS’s leading crime statistician, says

“low incidence but more harmful categories”,

he means murder. He means rape. He means knife crime. He means gun crime. Those relatively low-volume crimes—relative to, say, burglary—are poorly reported in the crime survey but reasonably well recorded by the police. In other words, it is a fact that the most serious crimes have risen steeply in incidence in the past two or three years; Ministers cannot hide from that.

The ONS makes another key policy and evidence point about the comparison between the crime survey and recorded crime: recorded crime is much better at spotting emerging trends—short-term fluctuations in crime that can easily become long-term trends if action is not taken. Police-reported crime rose by 13% in one year alone, and I hope that Ministers will not dismiss that. They need to ask themselves and their officials some deep questions about that trend, because if it continues and they wrongly dismiss it, people will pay a heavy price.

Another reason why the recent upturn in crime demands urgent action is the complexity of the rising crime we are seeing. Complexity can demand significant police resource for just one difficult crime. Counter-terrorism is the obvious example. The record spate of terrorist attacks and plots this year clearly marks a shift in terrorist activity, and the intensity of the demand that that makes on the police requires a response from Government. It is no good Ministers saying that police reserves can sort that out, as the Home Secretary claimed recently. First, some police forces have very small reserves; secondly, those with large reserves have them because they have so many unfunded and unpredictable cost pressures, from unfunded pay decisions to terrorist attacks.

The police also face other examples of similarly resource-intensive complex crimes: cyber-crime, child sexual abuse, fraud, modern slavery and human trafficking. The UK has among the highest proportions of complex reported crime in the world, demanding ever more resource, yet police resources have been cut.

I fully admit that those cuts are not new. The Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary during the coalition, presided over cuts, which she continued after the 2015 general election. As a result, today we have nearly 17,000 fewer police officers and more than 4,500 fewer police community support officers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Ed Davey

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

First, every customer will get something off their bills because of the rebate that we are putting through related to renewable and social costs, so it is not true that some people will not see any reduction. Furthermore, when the hon. Lady and her colleagues talk about the big six, they forget to mention that Labour created the big six. It was when Labour messed up the reforms of the energy markets in 2001 and abolished the pool in a bad way that we saw consolidation and the big six. We are now fixing that problem.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

9. What estimate he has made of the number of jobs that will be created in the renewables industry as a result of the provisions of the Energy Act 2013.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Ed Davey

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I pay tribute to him, to the Government of Wales and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales for the important role that they have all played in this deal. I can confirm that the Office for Nuclear Regulation will have all the resources it needs to go through the generic design assessment for the advanced boiling water reactors that Hitachi is proposing.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the new nuclear build for the west coast of Cumbria seems to be tied to the storage of nuclear waste at the site? Given the recent earth tremors in west Cumbria, one of which reached nearly 4 on the Richter scale a year or so ago, does he not agree that that would be the worst geological site in the UK on which to store nuclear waste?

[Mr Davey]

I have to say to my hon. Friend that that is certainly not what our scientists and analysts are saying. I know that there is a debate about the geological disposal facility in west Cumbria, but I am reassured that the local authorities are going about the decision on whether to host such a GDF in a sensible and authoritative way, and I am sure that they will support the proposal, which is an important step forward for new nuclear.