Police Employer Pension Contributions

Debate between Wes Streeting and Gareth Thomas

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, and he has talked about the attitude of his constituents in north-east London. Those concerns are shared in north-west London. I have lived in my constituency all my life, and I cannot remember a time before now when there was gun crime on the streets of Harrow. In the past 12 months, we have found ourselves in the unprecedented situation of having two significant incidents of gun crime. That is unparalleled.

[Wes Streeting]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I say without any prejudice towards inner London that, in reality, inner London has always had to grapple with violent crime. For MPs in boroughs such as Lambeth and Lewisham, gun crime, knife crime and gang crime have always been part and parcel of their work as constituency MPs. We know that there are problems concentrated in inner cities. That is an unfortunate fact of life, and it is one that we are working really hard to try to tackle. Frankly, no one should have to tolerate violent crime, wherever they live. My hon. Friend has just mentioned suburban London. My constituency borders the county of Essex, and I did not expect to see these levels of knife crime and violent crime there when I was elected to this place three years ago.

At Prime Minister’s questions today, I referred to an awful incident, which I would actually not associate with the police cuts, but I would draw to the Minister’s attention the stabbings and the gang crime in my constituency, as well as the county lines activity. Young people are being actively groomed at school gates. They are being identified because of their vulnerability and because they are the kids that are falling behind at school, and they are being groomed to run drugs across the country. We need police on our streets to deal with this. It is not just about grabbing people and nicking them; it is about the intelligence that community policing provides. It is about intelligence gathering and relationship building. It is about building trust so that people will come forward and speak to the police. All that is put at risk by the impact of the cuts to police budgets and police numbers. Given that that is the overall context, it is totally unacceptable to throw on top of that these changes to employer pension contributions, which are adding to the budgetary pressures.

To his credit, the Mayor of London has tried, with the resources he has available, to stem the tide of police cuts. Sadiq Khan has put in £140 million to fund 1,000 police officers, who would otherwise not be there. That has come at the cost of diverting into the policing budget money that the Greater London Authority gathers through business rates. It has also come at a cost to my constituents and to residents right across our capital city, who are paying more through their precept for policing.

It is so difficult to have a conversation about this with voters on the doorstep—this applies to council tax generally, by the way. I knock on people’s doors, and they say really clearly, “Hang on a minute. How is it that my local services are getting worse and there are fewer police officers on the street? My precept is going up—I am paying more. Why aren’t we getting more police?” That is a perfectly reasonable question. I have to explain to my constituents something I think is unjustifiable, which is that the Mayor of London is having to put up their precept because he is doing his best to stem the tide of cuts from central Government. This is a repeat pattern of behaviour: central Government make decisions here and pass the buck to local decision makers, who are responsible for implementing the cuts.

TOEIC Visa Cancellations

Debate between Wes Streeting and Gareth Thomas

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Wes Streeting]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend could be here before returning to the main Chamber to consider the important matter of Brexit. I strongly agree and he is absolutely correct. The injustice is grave and the numbers affected are huge. This scandal should have been plastered on the front page of every national newspaper. It is bad enough that those students have been denied access to justice through appeal. They should have been given at least some sense of justice through the disinfectant of sunlight.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for his work on this subject. I suspect that a number of Members in the Chamber have, like me, had a series of affected constituents approach them. Given the seriousness of what has happened in the Home Office in the past—never mind that the Minister is new to the subject—does he think that this new scandal merits a proper, thorough independent inquiry?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree. In fact, when I come to describe the Home Office’s handling of this, we will see that an independent inquiry is necessary.