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Mr. Michael: I suppose that the right hon. Gentleman will go on to make his own party's spending commitments for the police and other things. I simply do not accept that nothing will change. The amount of money available will certainly not change, but what will change under a Labour Government is, first, honesty about how we deal with such matters, and secondly, the priorities of tackling the problems of crime that have been exacerbated by the Government's policies--visibly, considering the mountain of crime that has been created since they came to power. Those two changes will make a great deal of difference.
Mr. Beith: I should be delighted if the hon. Gentleman or, indeed, any member of any party in any future Government was able to meet the first of those commitments, and Government press releases honestly stated what was happening. That is a very desirable objective, which I entirely endorse. Changing priorities require the placing of additional resources in particular areas, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It would make a great deal of difference to fighting crime, especially youth crime, if we spent more money on education, as I am sure he agrees. That is another area in which the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East has made it clear that no more money can be committed.
Mr. Michael: Education is one of Labour's five specific commitments. Another is to provide jobs and opportunities for young people in the 18 to 25 age group. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that that would make a significant contribution to the environment in which--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. We are getting rather wide of the debate.
Mr. Beith: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The drift of speeches that say that there are insufficient resources for the police must be a preparedness to commit more resources to them. In pursuit of the hon. Gentleman's policy of honesty about statements on public finance, he should say that Labour could not find any more money, so the only improvements that it could achieve would be in spending existing money in different ways. That involves pretty uncomfortable resource decisions.
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The Liberal Democrats have made a specific commitment to finding the money that would be required to recruit a further 1,000 police officers. I do not claim that we can solve all the other problems that have been identified in speeches tonight. Unless some extra resources are delivered to the police, the promises made by both the other parties will not be fulfilled.
The diversion of resources from the police into the prison system, which I criticised as part of the drift of Government policy, also applies to the Labour party, which has supported much of the legislation that would bring it about.
Miss Widdecombe:
The right hon. Gentleman has honestly said that he would increase the number of police officers even further, and has acknowledged that that would have resource implications. Has he calculated how great those implications would be, and how does he intend to raise the money?
Mr. Beith:
We would need about £100 million, and every one of our Budget presentations in the past two years has set out ways in which we would fund it. The commitment is specific, and in the run-up to the election we will do the costings again and demonstrate precisely how it would be done. It is not an enormous commitment, but we think that it is cost-effective and addresses the need sensed by the public to have more police officers available in communities, to deter crime and restore confidence, and not to do so in such a way that they are constantly being recalled into other parts of the hard-pressed police service.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey):
The people of Merseyside are deeply worried about the way in which the new system of police grant allocation has adversely affected their area. The Minister will be well aware of that, as many representations were made in the past financial year about the problems facing the area in the transition from the old to the new system.
Merseyside has in the past two years suffered a significant reduction--more than 400--in the number of officers that it can employ, despite the fact that the precept paid by local people has risen 50 per cent. in the past three years. Taking account of the settlement that the Minister announced tonight, which assumes a 16.9 per cent. increase for the financial year 1997-98, Merseyside council tax payers--the people of Wirral, as well as the four other local authorities--will be paying the third largest precept in the country.
It is the fastest rising precept in the country--because of the particular problems of Merseyside police, of which the Minister will be well aware. Some are technical and concern the way in which pensions are funded; others concern the decline in population that Merseyside has experienced pretty consistently over the past 20 years, without experiencing any decrease in crime. There has been a 41 per cent. increase in crime in the area since 1979.
Many people will be aware of the difficulties faced by the chief constable in the Liverpool area over the past couple of years. There has been a substantial increase in
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The high level of crime has a particularly difficult effect on other, perhaps quieter areas of the Merseyside region, such as mine on the Wirral peninsula. Officers who are an increasingly scarce resource are drafted over the river to help with incidents and emergencies. I shall give one example of how the loss of more than 400 officers in the past two years has affected the situation on the ground. A constituent who contacted me recently had been awakened one night by banging on her front door. She went out and realised that a young woman was being attacked and had fled to the front of her house for help. She got the woman inside to safety and called the police. She had a hysterical woman who had been subjected to a nasty physical assault on her hands. It took the police 45 minutes to respond, not because they wanted to take 45 minutes to respond to emergency calls, but simply because they did not have the officers.
I contacted a local superintendent about that incident. He revealed to me that, in Wallasey, the staffing level on the night shift was two sergeants and 15 constables. If there is a serious incident somewhere else in the Merseyside area, those police officers are diverted there. That leaves local commanders little ability to respond to incidents in my constituency and areas such as Wirral, South where people have particular difficulties. My constituents and the people of the Wirral are worried that, under the Government's funding formula, they are being asked to pay a greater share of the cost of their police force through the council tax, but less money is directed to put officers on the beat to protect them. They are paying a great deal more and getting less cover for it.
As I am concerned about crime as an issue, I conducted a crime survey in my constituency. Another has been conducted in Wirral, South. The response was interesting. It demonstrated what people at the receiving end of the announcements that the Minister made in the House tonight think about the service that they receive.
My survey was of more than 600 people, so it was a reasonable size. Of the respondents, 71 per cent. felt vulnerable all or some of the time in public places. In Wirral, South the figure was 53 per cent. In Wallasey, 37 per cent. felt vulnerable in their own homes. Interestingly, the figure for Wirral was 42 per cent.--more people there felt vulnerable in their own home. In Wallasey, 30 per cent. of respondents said that they had been a victim of crime in the past two years and 83 per cent. had reported those crimes to the police. In Wirral, South, 49 per cent. of people had been a victim of crime in the past two years. In my constituency, just 8 per cent. of the victims were aware that an arrest had been made for the crimes committed against them. In Wirral, South the figure was much lower--only 5 per cent.
People realise that crime is increasing--they are increasingly victims of it. They also know that detection rates are falling and that they are expected to pay more in
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The overwhelming view of the people in both Wirral, South and Wallasey who responded to the surveys was that they wanted more police on the beat as a way of deterring the pettier forms of crime and to reassure them that there is a reasonable degree of law and order in their community. During the past two years, the result of the Conservative party's funding of the police service in Merseyside has been that, although people have wanted more police on the beat and paid more for them, they have actually had fewer.
What is expected to happen up to 2000 as a result of the progressive introduction of the new police funding formula, which the Minister's statement introduces for another year, is an additional loss of more than 200 police officers, and some support staff going as well. Those figures are not made up--they come directly from the chief constable's forward budget plans. Because of the injustices to the Merseyside police force inherent in the settlement, we are to expect a loss of revenue of £16 million by 2000-01. My constituents find it hard to understand why they must pay more but get less; and why, as crime levels rise, as levels of violent crime rise, and as people's fear of crime rises, our ability to respond to it, to reassure them and to stamp it out is falling.
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