Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans his Department has to (a) increase frontline police numbers and (b) ensure police have sufficient resources to tackle knife crime and other forms of violent crime.

The police funding settlement for 2019/20 increases overall funding for the police by around £970 million, including additional pensions funding and income from Council Tax. Following the announcement of the settlement, Police and Crime Commissioners have set out plans to recruit nearly 3,000 extra police officers.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced on 13 March an additional £100 million funding in 2019/20, including £80m of new funding from the Treasury. This will help in the police’s immediate response to the rise in serious knife crime, enabling priority forces to immediately begin planning to put in place the additional capacity they need. The funding will also be invested in Violence Reduction Units, bringing together a range of agencies including health, education, social services and others, to develop a multi-agency approach in preventing serious violence altogether. It is important that we recognise that greater law enforcement on its own will not reduce serious violence and that we must continue to focus on prevention.

The majority of the investment will go towards supporting police forces where violent crime is impacting the most, to take immediate action to suppress the violence we are seeing, to make our streets safer. We are engaging with partners including the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and we are developing the criteria by which forces will receive this funding.