Police Grant Report

Tom Brake Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

The Energy and Climate Change Minister wrote to complain about the level of cash that the grant had given to Sussex police authority, but he will today vote for a £2.4 million cut. Indeed, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) will today vote for a £1.8 million cut for Humberside police. I presume that the people of Humberside look forward to that.

I have thrown a lot at the Conservative part of the coalition, but I have saved my ire for the Liberal Democrats. In the debate in February, the Liberal Democrats did not vote against the order before the House, but called for more resources. I asked the then Member for Chesterfield how much more he thought we should give to police this year. Sadly—it is always sad when someone loses their seat, but I am always glad for people who win one—he was replaced by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) at the election. The hon. Gentleman answered by saying:

“The Liberal Democrats have clearly said that we would divert money by abandoning particular…programmes—identity cards have been a long-standing option.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 340.]

He said that the number of extra police resulting from abandoning identity cards would be “about 3,000”. As I recall, the process of abandoning ID cards is coming to an end, so those savings can now be made. I look forward to the Liberal Democrats therefore voting not to cut resources from forces in England in Wales, and to them using their influence so that the money saved from ID cards can be used to save the resources that will be cut today.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Hanson]

I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman. Will he say how, when he goes back to his constituency in London, he will explain the £28 million that he is to take off the Greater London authority this year, in-year, when his former hon. Friend argued for 3,000 extra police officers in the debate in February?

[Tom Brake]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether during the February debate he drew to the House’s attention the fact that the Government were understating the structural deficit to the tune of £12 billion? I cannot recall him saying that.

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman knows that Labour had a structural deficit reduction plan that involved looking at deficits and tax increases next year, which would have made a difference. We would also have looked at cuts in certain areas of expenditure, but police funding was not one of them.

In the light of the abandonment of ID cards, will the Liberal Democrats vote for the £28 million cut in London and the cuts in other forces this year, and against a measure that they supported earlier in the year? The Deputy Prime Minister campaigned for more funding and officers during the general election, but today he will vote to cut £2.8 million from South Yorkshire’s budget. During a televised election debate on crime on 20 April, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, who was the Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesman, said that there would be no reduction in police numbers under a Lib Dem Government. He probably never expected to find himself in a Lib Dem Government, but sadly he has got one, and he will go through the Lobby today to take that money off his own force in Hampshire.

On her website, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), said:

“A Liberal Democrat Government would recruit 10,000 extra police.”

I look forward to her walking through the Lobby today to cut £28 million from London police. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) said that

“Withington Liberal Democrats are launching a petition to stop any further cuts in Police numbers”.

I look forward to signing that petition and to the hon. Gentleman walking through the Lobby today to cut money from Greater Manchester police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I shall start with the one point of agreement I have with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), and that is the excellent work that the police do. He is right that we last debated this matter five months ago, and there is a sense of déjà vu about this. However, what has changed—I regret that he and his colleagues have not recognised it—is that we now know, for example, about the £12 billion structural deficit underestimate by the previous Government. He may also have noticed what has happened in other countries such as Greece in recent months, which has given an added urgency to what the coalition Government have had to do.

I can certainly confirm that five months ago I did not expect to be standing here today defending the proposals we have before us. However, as my right hon. Friend the Minister said, it is the previous Government’s economic scorched-earth policy that leaves us with no alternative. My hon. Friends know that some challenging efficiency savings will have to be made, and we will need a degree of prioritisation that has perhaps not had to happen before. It is right to berate the Opposition for their failure to acknowledge even a modicum of responsibility for the current financial difficulties that we are trying to address. However, it would be wrong not to acknowledge the increase in police numbers in recent years. The safer neighbourhood teams were positive developments, and the trend has been towards a reduction in crime, although we can argue about the statistics and the measures used to calculate that.

Efficiency savings, especially as used as euphemism for withdrawing valuable services, are never popular, but we are in a stronger position to take those measures now with the downward trend in crime than we might have been if the trend had been upwards. I am sure that the Minister, when he was preparing for this debate, will have looked at the report of February’s debate. Several points were raised then that I hope can now be clarified. One is what is happening to recruitment across forces—an issue that Paul Holmes, who is no longer the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield, raised. In the autumn, we have the comprehensive spending review and I am sure that the Minister will argue the case for the police service strongly. Can he provide any more information about how he will push the case for police funding in those discussions?

In February, the issue of special grant funded allocations was also raised and the concern expressed that while the core budget might be maintained—although we now know that unfortunately that is not the case—their removal might have a greater effect on the number of police officers and of PCSOs. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that point.

On flexibility of funding, I am signed up to the agenda of greater localism and giving local authorities greater powers to deliver services. However, I am a little perplexed about why we are pushing that agenda in relation to a freeze in council tax, which goes against the proposition that local authorities should be able to take more decisions. I appreciate that at this particular time when everyone is struggling financially, we need to promote that, but I wonder whether in the future—particularly when MORI polls, which were mentioned in the February debate, have confirmed that in certain circumstances people are willing to pay a little more through their precept if they can see that additional police services are delivered—we will have the flexibility to allow that to happen.

Another important matter raised in the February debate was linking police funding to the census, and how responsive it was to it. It has been announced that the census will not happen, so I hope that the Minister will provide some clarity about what funding will be linked to. That would give us a greater degree of confidence that, under the coalition Government, we will in future be able to reflect an increase in population more promptly in the funding that flows through not just to the police, but to other services as well.

Finally, it is clear that in times of adversity there is more ingenuity around. I suspect that Members on both sides of the House might have received suggestions from people about how efficiency savings could be identified. Force mergers have been discussed. A constituent contacted me to suggest that we need a London police force and that there might be scope for incorporating the City of London police into the rest of the Metropolitan Police Service. Another constituent made suggestions about the way in which detectives are rotated. There are ways and means of ensuring that efficiency savings are achieved without having an impact on front-line services.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, can he help me to understand how it is in these straitened times that the Conservative manifesto commitment to increasing the cost of the elected commissioner experiment persists, while the Lib Dem manifesto commitments have been dropped? How did that come about, or is it that the hon. Gentleman did not have any influence? Is he at all worried that Lib Dem broken promises are going to create a broken Britain?

[Tom Brake]

I will leave it to the hon. Gentleman to promote the idea through his literature that the Liberal Democrats have broken their promises. If he looked at the coalition programme, he would find that, in practice—there is no secret about this—some proposals that we wanted to promote as a party before the general election are not included in it, while some proposals that the Conservative party wanted to promote when it was in opposition are equally not in it.

[Steve McCabe]

indicated dissent.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman is obviously struggling to come to terms with the concept of a coalition and what it means in practice. I am afraid he will just have to get used to the fact that these things happen.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

On that precise point, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Deputy Prime Minister came to my constituency to launch the Liberal Democrat plan for more police officers by getting rid of ID cards, and that although we now have no ID cards, we not only have no additional police officers in Durham, but face substantial cuts to them?

[Tom Brake]

All I can do is go over the same response that I gave earlier. First, I am very pleased that we have started the process of getting rid of ID cards so quickly. Secondly, I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister would have said something different if the hon. Lady’s Front-Bench team had provided greater clarity on where we stood as a nation in terms of our finances. I am afraid that the only example of clarity we have had is the single-sentence letter on there being “no money”. That was a good example of a very honest Minister making it clear where the new Government stood and what problems they would have to tackle.

To return to detective rotation, about which a constituent contacted me, it may be a good example of how more money could be saved in the service. As I understand it, detectives are often rotated a matter of months before retirement. They then have to undergo a new raft of training for a new role before—literally, just a few months later—retiring. That does not seem a very sensible investment. Perhaps it could be looked at to ensure that detectives are allowed to continue in their present posts so that the police service does not incur those training costs for a role that they will not carry out beyond a couple of months after starting it.

No reduction in funding is ever going to be welcomed. I believe, however, that the scale of efficiency savings being proposed is manageable and that it is possible for our police forces to deliver both value for money and security on our streets at the same time.