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11.28 pm
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham): I shall be brief, but I shall take the opportunity to congratulate the Minister of State, Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), on behalf of my constituents and of those who live in the area served by the Northumbria police force on what he has done for policing in north-east England. The change from the historic method of funding police forces to the needs-based formula resulted in an increase of £15 million in the police budget last year and a further budget increase of £10 million this year. That is a substantial sum for the Northumbria police force and will translate into at least 35 extra officers this year. I hope that John Stevens, the chief constable, understands what my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said about the need to put some of the extra resources into rural areas.
Mr. Beith: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the chief constable has done precisely that and released officers for rural areas after a long period when there were far too few.
Mr. Atkinson: I agree that our present chief constable has shown a strong commitment to rural areas.
I can give my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale some good news about crime in rural areas. In the Hexham division, the number of burglaries and car crimes has fallen and thefts from agricultural buildings and factories are down by nearly a third. That is very good news for the people of rural Northumberland, and I hope that the trend continues.
I fear that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) did not understand the point of the new arrangements for policing. We have given chief constables power to organise their own establishments. In Northumberland, that has resulted in a number of senior officers and part of the hierarchical chain of command being removed from the service. As a consequence, some officers have retired early, so numbers have fallen. At the same time, however, the chief constable is recruiting new officers, so there are bound to be fluctuations in the number of officers in the force at any one time.
In Northumbria, there is a steady upward swing in numbers, which will mean an extra 140 officers in the next three years.
Mr. Michael:
The Northumbria force has grown in number but the overall picture has been one of decreases
Mr. Atkinson:
I make no pretence of doing so, but I was trying to explain the method whereby police numbers will sometimes go down but then go up, depending on the way in which a chief constable decides to organise his force structure.
The deal for the people in the Northumbria police area has meant an 18 per cent. drop in crime since its peak in 1991 and a further 5 per cent. drop this year. We are getting a very good deal from our police force and we are also encouraged because arrests and the detection rate are up substantially.
Mr. Mike O'Brien (North Warwickshire):
The House will know that for the past two years I have had the honour to be Labour's parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation. I shall hold that post for only another two days, at which time I shall hand over the position to my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig). I am sure that he will be successful and even more popular than I have been.
In Warwickshire, crime in general has trebled since 1979 and the number of burglaries and car crimes has quadrupled. However, in the past couple of years crime has started to decrease as a result of police work and, particularly, the introduction of the new community beat officer scheme, Operation Claw, which targeted burglars. It has also decreased as a result of the massive public support that was so apparent in the recent report byHM inspectorate of constabulary on Warwickshire police force.
I am angry that our force, which has been so successful in fighting crime, should be penalised by the Home Office's failure to fund it properly. The chief constable and the police authority have said that the force has been underfunded to the tune of £6 million. According to the chief constable, in this financial year 61 posts have been lost from the previous establishment figure. The previous establishment was 1,045 but by November it had fallen to 984. The chief constable anticipates that it will have fallen to 945 by April 1997--a loss of 97 officers. That is not all due to Operation Sapphire--the Minister will know what I mean by that--which involved only 22 officers. Our constabulary has experienced a significant reduction in the number of officers. The Home Office is undermining the fight against crime in our county.
There have also been increased costs to my constituents. Many of them are very angry at the constabulary's new key holder policy, whereby people have to pay £50 plus VAT for something that previously was free of charge. They understand that the constabulary is under great pressure to introduce such policies, but they are angry that it is being forced to do so by the Home Office.
Warwickshire has been hit twice--first, by the Government's overall settlement for police, which is very tight, and, secondly, by the formula. The force says in its report to the Home Office that it hopes to stabilise the reduction in service in the medium term, but that a further decline in uniformed officers in 1996-97 is inevitable unless there is a significant shift in the spending power available to the force.
Her Majesty's inspector of constabulary said in his report on Warwickshire in 1995:
The Minister should be thoroughly ashamed of such a report, yet he obviously does not seem to appreciate its importance. He says that the Prime Minister's promise of thousands of extra police officers will be fulfilled. It is clearly not being fulfilled in Warwickshire. Force morale, as the police authority so graphically said, is in real danger.
I ask the Minister to consider whether it is necessary to review the funding formula. I think that it should be reviewed to take into account adjacent metropolitan populations. Warwickshire has the west midlands, Leicester and a number of large metropolitan authorities nearby. We have crime problems from those authorities, but they are not reflected in the funding formula. Warwickshire also has miles of motorway--it is probably the county with the most miles of motorway. They need patrolling, and that factor should be properly recognised in the funding formula.
The funding formula should also reflect previous years' major operations that had an overall long-term effect on the budget--the Coventry airport animal rights demonstrations, which were enormously expensive, the Wardell murder inquiry and the tragic Naomi Smith killing in my constituency. They have all been an enormous drain on the constabulary's reserves and that must be recognised when the funding formula is reviewed.
I also condemn the way in which the Home Office has failed properly to fund closed circuit television in our area. The Home Office said that it was making funds available. Nuneaton and Bedworth and North Warwickshire applied for that funding and were refused. From Home Office replies, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) has been able to show that of the funding available for CCTV more than 70 per cent. went to the very few Conservative authorities in the country. That is discrimination against Labour authorities such as Nuneaton and Bedworth and North Warwickshire. Thankfully, the council can claim that, as a Labour authority, it has properly and fully funded the introduction of CCTV despite the handicap of the Government.
The results of the severe damage to funding in Warwickshire are clearly set out by Superintendent Gordon Wilson, who is in charge of Nuneaton police--the area of my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton(Mr. Olner). I am sure that Mr. Wilson spoke for all the officers in Warwickshire when he was quoted in the
Bedworth Telegraph on 8 December. I have already drawn the House's attention to the article, which suggested that the promise of 5,000 officers has resulted in the loss of 60 so far this year and the introduction of only nine. The Prime Minister's promise was pathetic.
Superintendent Wilson said:
That is a senior police officer talking about the failure of the Government--a failure of which the Minister should be thoroughly ashamed.
"The freeze on recruitment, elimination of overtime, depletion of staffing levels most acutely seen on public holidays, postponing IT developments, abandoning of much of the training programme and over-reliance on the Special Constabulary will have an effect, in the longer term, on core policing in Warwickshire, and thus, on the service to the public".
"The simple fact is that if you don't pay, you don't get the service. If the proper funding isn't forthcoming from the government, there is going to be a reduction in the quality of service to the public.
Our officers have responded admirably this year to a lack of funds, which has meant some working unpaid overtime to make sure the job gets done.
But they can't keep doing that. Something's got to give . . .
It's a vicious circle: The more the officers are stretched at work, the more likely they are to get sick and need time off, leaving fewer officers even more stretched and even more stressed".
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