Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley)Department Debates - View all Yvette Cooper's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
Today the House is being asked to approve a 20% cut in Government funding for the police force in England and Wales. The deputy chief constable of Devon and Somerset, Shaun Sawyer, has said that these are
“the biggest…cuts for a generation”.
The deputy chief constable of Cambridgeshire has said that the cuts are “unprecedented” and will have a
“real impact on people's lives and families.”
The House is being asked to vote for 20% cuts, a reduction of more than 10,000 police officers, and substantial cuts to police community support officers and critical support staff. The choice for MPs today is whether to back those cuts to the police in their own constituencies or to stand up, defend their communities and tell the Government to think again.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he will tell me whether he is prepared to support the cuts to the police in his constituency.
Henry Smith
May I ask the right hon. Lady whether she supports the Darling deficit reduction plan, which I understand the new shadow Chancellor also supports and which would have seen £9 of every £10 of the Government’s proposed cuts to the police service going ahead?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong, and I just say to him that he will be voting today to support 500 police officers being cut from the Sussex police force. I wonder whether he will put that on his leaflet when he campaigns at the next election—it will certainly be on ours.
Chief constables across the country are being put in an impossible position. Of course they are working hard to reassure the public, to do everything they can to improve policing, to manage with the budgets that the Minister has given them, and to deliver the best possible service and keep reducing the level of crime, but they are having the rug pulled from beneath them by the crazy scale and pace of these cuts. He can try all the smoke and mirrors he wants—he talks about cash cuts and hypothetical council tax increases—but the facts are very clear: there are to be more than 7% of real cuts in the police grant for next year and more than 8% the following year. The total cut is more than 20% in real terms, which is more than £2 billion, as the Minister has admitted.
What are the consequence of that? They are: 100 fewer police officers in Cumbria; 258 fewer police officers in Cheshire; 256 fewer police officers in South Wales; 114 fewer police officers in the Thames Valley; more than 1,000 fewer officers in the West Midlands; and more than 1,000 fewer police officers in London. The result is more than 10,000 fewer police officers in England and Wales. They are not our figures, but the figures from the chief constables and police authorities across the country. This means 10,000 police officers gone, which is the equivalent of every police officer in Hampshire, Kent and Sussex put together, or every police officer in the entire east midlands. That is the reduction that these areas are having to face and that is just the start.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way if the hon. Gentleman can say whether he will be putting the police cuts in his area on his leaflet at the next election.
Yvette Cooper
Perhaps I should ask the hon. Gentleman what he means by the “front-line”. He may think that trained police officers can just be got rid off without that having any impact on the communities they serve, but that is not what his constituents think and it is not what the people of Staffordshire will think when 70 police officers are cut as part of the planned cuts that his Government are introducing.
Nick Herbert
The right hon. Lady is committed to cutting police funding by more than £1 billion a year. Is she saying that that can be done without reducing the size of the work force? How many of the 10,000 police officers that she has said are to go are front-line officers?
Yvette Cooper
I will come back to the point that the Minister raises about what Labour’s plans would be, because that is important, but first let me address the issue about the front line. The Prime Minister promised to protect the front line and he promised to carpet any Minister putting forward front-line cuts. The Home Secretary said that it is possible for the police to make significant reductions in their budgets “without affecting front-line policing.” But officers are being lost from the front line every single day—their number has reduced by 2,000 since the election alone. London is losing 300 sergeants from the safer neighbourhood teams, Birmingham has already lost police from its community teams, and the plans of the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire forces have already troubled residents. Thanks to budget cuts, those forces have told gun owners that they will not be doing home visits and people can renew their gun licence by phone. The police have said in response:
“Unfortunately in the current climate policing is having 20% removed from its budgets we have to make the best use of that money and we are adopting a risk based approach.”
Those police have been put in an impossible position. What is more front line than keeping neighbourhoods safe or preventing gun crime? What is more front line than 10,000 trained police officers?
We have asked the Government what they mean by protecting the front line. In the other place in December, they were asked for their definition of the front-line policing that the Home Secretary said she would protect. It took more than two months for Baroness Neville-Jones to reply:
“There is no formally agreed definition of frontline police services.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 February 2011; Vol. 725, c. WA50.]
Now we know why they will not protect those services—they do not even know what they are. But crime victims and communities across the country know exactly what front-line services are and they can see that they are under threat every day from this Government.
Nick Herbert
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. If she cannot define front-line services, how does she know that officers are going from the front line? Will she answer the question I asked? As she is committed to cutting police funding by more than £1 billion a year, will she admit that that would mean a smaller police work force?
Yvette Cooper
The Minister has tried to claim that police officer jobs would go under Labour’s plans. Let us be clear: our view is that we should be giving the police enough money to protect police officers and police community support officers across the country because we believe they are doing a good job. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the former Home Secretary, did indeed announce plans for just more than £1 billion to be made in efficiency savings over this Parliament and yes, we have made it clear that we would have cut the police budget in line with those efficiency plans. He set out measures through which that could be done, such as greater collaboration, procurement savings and better management of staff and shifts to save money on overtime. We agree that the police service should continue to do more of what it has already been doing to improve efficiency. However, the Minister is cutting not £1 billion but £2 billion. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary identified 12% of efficiency savings, not 20%, and it said:
“A cut beyond 12% would almost certainly reduce police availability”.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way if the hon. Gentleman will say whether those 70 officers will now be on his leaflet.
Mr Burley
The right hon. Lady mentioned Staffordshire police: perhaps I can explain to her what their front line might be. Staffordshire police have committed to retaining every police officer in their neighbourhood police teams, but they are still cutting 250 back-office staff. Will she join me in congratulating Staffordshire police on keeping all the front-line officers in their neighbourhood police teams?
Yvette Cooper
Staffordshire police, like other police forces across the country, are having to work immensely hard to keep the police working to do everything they possibly can to fight crime while they are faced with massive cuts. Staffordshire police are faced with a 7.5% cut in their budget next year alone, followed by an 8.7% cut the following year. Those steep cuts in the first year will have consequences in relation to the 70 police officers being lost, specialist teams and the work being done across the police force.
The Government are cutting more from police budgets in two years than the former Home Secretary proposed over a Parliament. If the Home Secretary and the Minister think that can all be done through efficiency savings, what do they have to say to the chief constables across the country who are cutting officers? Are they all wrong? Are they all profligate? Are they all inadequate in meeting efficiency challenges? Or is the truth that they are doing their best to manage in the face of very difficult cuts? Is not the truth that the Home Secretary and the Minister have broken with more than a century of Tory tradition? They are not looking for efficiency savings as an alternative to police officer cuts—they think that efficiency savings are the police officer cuts. They think that the best way to improve police productivity is to cut the number of police working across Britain.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right about the huge difference between the claims that those on the Government side made before the election and the reality of what they are doing now.
We now have the first Home Secretary and Policing Minister in Tory party history to want fewer police working to fight crime across Britain. The Minister is the first Policing Minister in Tory party history to believe there is no link between the number of police and the level of crime, ignoring the evidence of recent history—the 43% drop in crime in the Labour years alongside the 17,000 extra police and the 16,000 police community support officers.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that more than 2,000 police officers will go in the west midlands under the proposals?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right: West Midlands police are being heavily affected and are set to lose a large number of police officers. That is already having an effect on communities across the area, with some police officers reporting considerable difficulties as a result of the recruitment freeze that has had to be implemented and the consequences that is having on their ability to go to neighbourhood meetings and to respond to concerns that are raised with them.
Steve McCabe
Is not one of the problems that the West Midlands police suffer from the gearing effect? Although the Minister has given the impression that the cuts were modest—I think he quoted £5 million in Hull—the gearing effect in the West Midlands police means they are losing 17.2% of their total resources. That is nearly £100 million, and they cannot lose that without cutting front-line staff.
Yvette Cooper
The situation in the west midlands is clear. The number of police officers is being cut and that is having an impact on the area.
The latest research on the links between police and crime from Civitas, which the Minister presumably regards as a bastion of left-wing profligacy—he shakes his head to indicate that he disagrees with Civitas—shows that there is a
“strong relationship between the size of police forces and national crime rates”.
That report states:
“A nation with a larger proportion of police officers is somewhat more likely to have a lower crime rate. A nation with fewer police is more likely to have a higher crime rate.”
More importantly, perhaps, those on the Government Benches are ignoring the public. Today’s poll shows that two thirds of people believe that crime will rise as a result of the Home Secretary’s cuts. People do not want the cuts to the police that the Government are introducing.
The Minister often resorts to the claim that it is Labour’s red tape which is responsible for the fact that only 11%—to quote the figure that he uses—of force strength is visible and available. He fails to point out, in a misrepresentation of the HMIC analysis, that that figure for a 24 hours a day, seven days a week service does not take account of the officers on late shift, night shift or rest day, or of the officers working on serious investigations, counter-terrorism, drugs, cyber crime or child protection.
The right hon. Gentleman should consider for a moment what would happen if his own efficiency were measured in the same way. Let us imagine that the test of Ministers’ efficiency was the amount of time in a 24/7 period that they spent speaking in the House of Commons. The amount of time that the Policing Minister spends sleeping, eating and working on knife crime, counter-terrorism or long-term planning would not be counted, as the Government do not count comparable time for the police.
On the basis of the Minister’s week in the Chamber for debate and in the Bill Committee—he has been busy —he gets to an average visibility 24/7 of not 11%, which the police manage, but 3.27%, and that includes the radio time that he was forced to do on Sunday. His visibility is not as good as that of the police, but I am sure he has some efficiency plans to share his red boxes across Departments. His boss, the Home Secretary, is at 0%. Where, by the way, is the Home Secretary?
Keith Vaz
I commend my right hon. Friend for her great interest in what the Minister has been doing. It is a fascinating study. I know that she is making a powerful point, but perhaps she could be a little charitable to the Minister. It may be that the Home Office did not envisage the kind of cuts that she has been talking about. Does she agree that Ministers should go back to the Treasury to explain that the effects of the cuts are very severe indeed, and that an additional special grant ought to be given to the Home Office to deal with that?
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. It may well be that Ministers believed the figures they were given by the Treasury and believed that front-line services would not be hit. However, the pace and the scale of the cuts are indeed hitting front-line services. They are having an impact on police forces across the country. Ministers ought to go back to the Treasury to discuss that again.
Hazel Blears
As my right hon. Friend knows, a consultation was launched this week on tackling antisocial behaviour. Whatever the Government do to rename the orders and introduce some kind of cosmetic change, is it not the truth that in order to reduce antisocial behaviour, we need PCSOs and police officers on the front line in our communities, where it matters?
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. She worked to tackle antisocial behaviour over many years and initiated some extremely important work. She is right that all the powers in the world will make no difference if we do not have the police in place to work closely with communities in local areas to implement those powers in practice.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. If four people ring up and then one rings a second time, does that person count as a fifth person? Presumably the Home Office will set out guidance and red tape for local communities and police to follow.
Where is the Home Secretary today? That is an important question, because I understand that she has been sighted in the building. I know that such debates are normally attended by Ministers of State, but normally Home Secretaries do not cut the police grant by 20%. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is coming here to defend his cuts, so why will she not defend hers? Could it be because she knows that she got stitched up in the spending review and so will not defend it? She left the Minister out on his own—a very thin blue line—and will not join the police cuts front line.
The Government are taking a gamble with crime and policing, just as they are taking a gamble with the economy.
Nick Herbert
The right hon. Lady is being generous in giving way, which I thank her for. Will she please answer my question, which I will now ask a third time? Will she admit that the cuts of more than £1 billion in policing to which she has committed could only be achieved by making the police work force smaller?
Yvette Cooper
We have said very clearly that we believe that the police should have the money to protect the number of police officers and police community support officers. Those are the numbers of staff that we believe ought to be protected across the country, in contrast to the cut of 10,000 in police officers. We think that we should have 10,000 more than the number the Minister is now pursuing right across the country. It is wrong for Britain and wrong for communities, and the public know it. No matter how many games he plays with smoke and mirrors, the public know it and want the extra police officers.
We will support those extra 10,000 police officers and would provide the funding to support them, because we think that that is the right thing to do. The Government are taking a gamble with crime and policing, just as they taking a gamble with the economy. They are cutting too far and too fast. They are risking economic growth and jobs and now are risking public safety and the fight against crime. Their Back Benchers should think again.
The Liberal Democrats are voting for a cut of 10,000 police officers, instead of the increase of 3,000 that they promised, and the Conservatives are ripping up hundreds of years of supporting the police in order to cut the front line. I say to Members of both parties that if they vote for these cuts today, they are badly out of touch with what their constituents want and are turning their backs on the fight against crime. Britain was not broken, but the Government are doing their best to break it now. Those Members should join us in telling the Government to go back, think again and come back with a better plan.
Nick Herbert
With the leave of the House, I shall respond briefly to the points that hon. Members have made. First, I have listened to the points made by the hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and I understand the implications for forces that raise less money from local council tax payers. I have explained why the decision we took was fair, I have said that we will continue to discuss these issues and the impacts on forces, and I am happy to have a meeting.
I always pay attention to the views of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I believe we have set out in clear terms how the police landscape must change, but his remarks will no doubt move me to make a further speech on the issue, a copy of which I will of course send to him, to clarify the position. I draw his and the House’s attention to the speech I gave to the City Forum two weeks ago when I set out in terms how the savings that we need to achieve could be made.
I commend the speeches of my hon. Friends, particularly that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who admonished the House about the drive to reduce bureaucracy. I took every word he said seriously. The Government will say more about this and we are driving this issue, as is the leadership of the police service. We have made progress but there is more to do. I shall write to my hon. Friend regarding his additional points about how we should secure the very important reductions in the bureaucratic burden on the police.
I particularly welcomed the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who has had to leave the Chamber. They focused on how resources are deployed rather than just on the amount of money.
Both sides, including the Opposition, admit that police funding has to be cut, so both sides must recognise that that must mean the overall police work force will fall. What is totally disreputable about the Opposition’s attack is that they would cut funding and they know that that would mean a smaller work force, but they still mounted that political attack. The public will see through it. In dismissing the finding in the HMIC report that police availability and visibility is too low, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) shows that she is new to the job and has homework to do. The report says:
“The fact is that general availability, in which we include neighbourhood policing and response, is relatively low.”
She should pay attention to the inspectorate’s recommendations rather than dismissing them so lightly after just a few weeks in her job.
Yvette Cooper
Will the Minister withdraw his claim that the 11% figure was entirely due to Labour’s red tape, as opposed to the fact that some police officers are on night shift or late shift and that some of them are doing work on the drugs force, organised crime and a whole series of other things that are not included in that 11%?
Nick Herbert
The right hon. Lady should start quoting people accurately. I made no such claim. Let me read the second part of what the inspectorate said in the same paragraph:
“Several factors have combined to produce this ‘thin blue line’ of which shift patterns, risk management, bureaucracy and specialisation are the most significant.”
Visibility and availability are too low, they can be improved and she is foolish to dismiss that report.
Yvette Cooper
On that point, will the Minister look again at the answer he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), in which he said the figure was because of Labour’s red tape, and will he withdraw it?
Nick Herbert
It is, in part, because of Labour’s red tape that visibility is too low. The right hon. Lady should understand that and should not dismiss the inspectorate’s report. The situation could be improved by dealing with all these issues.
The Opposition are in an untenable position, because they would cut police funding and they know that that would mean a smaller police work force.
Question put,