Policing (England and Wales)

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing some reality to the discussion.

The Opposition have learnt that police chiefs have also recently been told to find another £165 million in 2019-20 and up to £417 million in 2020-21 as a result of the overhaul of pension schemes recently announced by the Treasury. We of course support better police pensions, and indeed better public sector pensions in general, but we do so by arguing that they should be properly funded, whereas Ministers want the money to support them to come out of the extra moneys that they are announcing today. The amount provided in the funding settlement to cover the pension changes is nowhere near the amount it will cost the police. There is a real risk that, with this poor beginning, the Government will fail to meet their total recruitment target. I hope that Government Members are taking due note.

Thirdly, I want to question the Government’s entire approach to this matter, because although police numbers are a key factor, they are only one aspect of combating serious and violent crime. The Government’s goal must be to keep our citizens safe, but their track record is abysmal. I know that this set of Ministers like to pretend that the record of the past 10 years has nothing to do with them, but most of the Ministers now in office voted for the police cuts that have been made. This is continuity Toryism, and they are continuity Tories.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Lady very proud of the Labour Mayor’s record on tackling crime in London?

[Ms Abbott]

As we know, the Labour Mayor is ultimately dependent on funding from the Government. Given the funding available, I am confident that Sadiq Khan has done the very best he can. The issue comes back to the totality of funding and the police funding formula.

The Tories cut the police and they should own it—cuts have consequences. But they also did much worse: they presided over soaring serious and violent crime, and an abysmally low detection and sanction rate—cautions or charges—even for some of the most serious crimes. The latest crime data for the year ending September 2019 was recently published. It shows a 7% rise in offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police. That is 46% higher than when comparable recording began—in the year ending March 2011—and the highest on record. That is the Government’s record.

Offences involving firearms hit a low in March 2015 but have risen since. Robbery offences are at a 10-year high. Fraud incidents are up sharply and now there are almost 4 million fraud crimes a year, often impacting on some of the most vulnerable members of our communities. Over the long term, the trend in total crime had been downwards, but under successive Tory-led Governments since 2010 that overall progress has stalled. A key part of this is the fact that central Government funding for police and crime commissioners has fallen by 30% in real terms since 2010-11.

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[Richard Drax]

Ah, there is another Dorset MP in his place. The Dorset police do a fantastic job, as I am sure my hon. Friend would agree.

The aim of the police, in my view, is to prevent crime and to catch criminals—that is it. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his place. He is doing a wonderful job, as he always has, and will be an extremely able Minister. I am sure he would agree that the police have more and more pressures piled on them, from looking after people with mental health issues to picking up wandering dogs. That is not their job. Their job is to catch criminals and to prevent crime. A lot of their time is taken up with doing other tasks. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for this increase in our funding, but I must remind him, as I have done in the past, that Dorset is near the bottom of the pile. We welcome the levelling up, but more levelling up is needed, and the funding formula, which Opposition Members have mentioned, definitely needs to be looked at.

Before I get on to the three points that the police and crime commissioner has asked me to raise, I would like to touch on minor crime. I will not speak for very long. We hear time and again about the effects of minor crime. As a journalist for 17 years, I covered those sorts of things, and I saw the damage that they did. One old lady, for example, lost all her belongings when a burglar stole her husband’s war medals. She died a year later from a broken heart. That is not a minor crime. It is burglary, which is very serious, and the effects of it are devastating. That is why we need more police officers on the beat. I understand that the nature of crime has changed and that more officers are now behind the scenes dealing with online crime and all those things. I get that, but that does not negate the need for men and women in uniform—not in yellow jackets. Can we get them back in their blue uniforms with the proper hats, please, so that we know what a policeman looks like? They stand for law and order. They are not a whole bunch of children on a sort of trail with yellow jackets all over the place. We need more officers on the beat, so that people can actually see them and the criminals who are about to commit a crime can see them. That means foot patrols in our cities, our towns and our villages. There is nothing that beats a foot patrol. I know that because I am an ex-soldier who served in Northern Ireland. That was our job—to deter the terrorist and, in the event, to catch them in the act.

[Tom Hunt]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in tackling crime, the police should spend far less time hounding members of the public for what they may or may not think on societal issues, such as in the case of Harry Miller and Humberside police, and far more time taking the side of the law-abiding majority and cracking down on the activities of Extinction Rebellion activists that we saw in Cambridge last week?

[Richard Drax]

I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend. As my colleagues know, I am very forthright in my views. Why did those police stand there while those activists dug up the lawn? If I did that, I would lose my job, my reputation—everything. They did not. Why not? That cannot be right. This is why we need more officers, to catch these people who are committing minor crimes. Minor crime undermines morale in our rural environment, in our towns and in our cities. Antisocial behaviour is another classic case in point. We need the police officers to jump on it, and jump on it fast.

Let me turn to the three points that I quickly want to make. We have a huge influx of tourists, and the funding formula does not cater for that. I would welcome some clarity on that when one of the Ministers sums up.

As part of the uplift programme, we have 50 new officers, whom we welcome. This is very good news. This uplift will take place over three years, and we expect another 120—I hope they come—but the police budgets are confirmed only one year at a time. A multi-year settlement would greatly help forces to plan for the future. Perhaps the Minister can expand on that when he sums up.

My final point relates to cases of fraud against the older population, which is becoming far too frequent. Sadly, many elderly people—many of my constituents—have been done on the telephone by these awful people who go to great lengths to sound like a bank or whatever it may be. The PCC said that he is mindful of the current review of serious and organised crime and aware of the negative publicity surrounding the national agency, Action Fraud. Does the Government have plans to deal with fraud in a different and more effective way in the future?

May I conclude in the same way that I started, by praising Dorset police and all the brave men and women who keep us safe both in the day and at night?

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[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I congratulate the four Members who have made maiden speeches this evening: my hon. Friends the Members for Newbury (Laura Farris), for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson), for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). They do not only follow Nancy Astor; they follow in the footsteps of four very distinguished former Members of Parliament, and I am sure that they will fill their shoes with aplomb.

When we look at the settlement for Suffolk on a year-by-year basis, comparing like with like, we see that it is reasonable: an increase of £9.2 million, from £125.7 million to £134.9 million. I shall therefore support the motion. However, the current basis on which the annual settlements are calculated short-changes Suffolk, and is in urgent need of review.

[Tom Hunt]

rose—

[Peter Aldous]

I will give way to my fellow Suffolk MP.

[Tom Hunt]

First, let me compliment my hon. Friend on his Ipswich Town socks, which are brilliant. On a serious note, however, let me say that on Saturday night there was a potentially fatal attack in St Matthew’s Street in Ipswich. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the funding formula is reviewed, there should be a clear understanding in the Government that it is not sleepy, rural Suffolk, and that in Suffolk we have some real issues and urban areas where we need to get on top of crime, and we need the funding to do so?

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am about to set out the case for why Suffolk needs a far better funding settlement than it has at present.

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s value for money profiles show that Suffolk has the third lowest staffing numbers per 1,000 of the population. Despite that, the county’s latest PEEL report reveals that it puts a higher proportion of its workforce into neighbourhood policing than the national average, that £152 per head of population is spent on policing in Suffolk compared with the national average of £192, and that 43% of Suffolk’s policing budget comes from local taxation. That is one of the highest percentages in the country.

There is indeed the challenge of rurality to contend with. Moreover, Suffolk has a high percentage of elderly residents, with approximately 13,000 people currently diagnosed with dementia. That creates additional safeguarding issues, and hence added pressure on the police. There are deprived neighbourhoods in Lowestoft in my constituency, and also in Ipswich, in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and they too need more support.

Suffolk has a long and porous coastline with 31 ports and marinas, and has for many years been a target for organised crime gangs involved in illegal immigration and the illegal drugs trade. The presence of the UK’s largest container port at Felixstowe, and the policing of the A12 and A14 routes to London and the midlands and north respectively, attract no additional support or funding.

Quite rightly, Suffolk constabulary has been collaborating with its neighbours in Norfolk in order to save money and reduce backroom costs. This collaboration, which began in 2010, has been successful and has yielded savings for Suffolk of £19 million. There is now very limited scope for making further significant changes. If Suffolk received the national average funding, the police budget would increase by nearly £30 million. If we received the same level of Home Office funding as neighbouring Norfolk, our collaborating partners, Suffolk’s grant would be £4 million higher. The case for reviewing the funding formula is strong. The Government have been promising a review since 2015, and I understand that at present it is intended that this should not take place until after the comprehensive spending review. I ask the Minister to provide, in her summing up, a more precise and, if possible, earlier timetable for carrying out this review. It is long overdue and Suffolk people are currently losing out.