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Mr. Greenway: I know the point the Minister is going to make. We listened carefully to what he said, so I hope that he will listen to what we say. I shall deal with the point that I know he has in mind.
Let us take the case of Lincolnshire constabulary, for example--I see that the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron) is in her place. The loss of grant to Lincolnshire is £2.5 million. The Lincolnshire police authority says that reductions in the number of police officers are inevitable, despite the fact that council tax payers are facing a 14 per cent. increase in their police council tax precept.
In Surrey, the grant has been cut by £7.5 million.A 28 per cent. increase in police council tax precept will not prevent a £4.3 million cut in budget, resulting in 20 to 30 fewer officers than were originally planned. Humberside police authority faces a budget cut of £2.5 million. Thames Valley faces a £6.3 million cut. Dorset faces a deficit of £1.5 million, despite a 12 per cent. hike in council tax. Cheshire must find £1.3 million in savings. It is inevitable that such reductions in spending will mean the employment of fewer police officers in many parts of the country. Is that what the Minister really intends?
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
In Wales, two of the four police authorities--Dyfed-Powys and Gwent--have expressed grave disappointment and concern at the implication of the settlement. In today's Western Mail, the acting chief constable of Gwent, Richard Thomas, is quoted as saying:
The problems that a large number of police forces face have been worsened by the fact that the Home Secretary has done precisely what he criticised in the past--he has altered the police grant formula to benefit one police force at the expense of another.
Mr. Michael:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
The Association of Police Authorities agrees, and is particularly critical, as the hon. Gentleman knows--although he glossed over it in his speech--of the decision to increase the Metropolitan police special payment by £21 million, which is an extra 16 per cent.
I know from personal experience the demands that are made on the Metropolitan police in such areas as public order and anti-terrorism. For example, a Metropolitan police study suggested that those responsibilities cost the mounted branch almost £10 million a year. However, that conclusion will not be viewed with much sympathy in North Yorkshire, where it was recently announced that the mounted branch will be closed down because of a lack of funds.
We must ask whether the Metropolitan police's so-called objective assessment was, in fact, objective and independent. If the case for giving more money to London is as strong as the Home Secretary believes, resources should arguably be provided by a special award for London and not by reducing the budget increase for police forces in the rest of the country. On closer examination, however, it appears that Londoners face a 26 per cent. increase in their police council tax precept to cover the £21 million. The residents of London, not the Government, will fund the extra payment. The claim that London alone needs special funding for capital or city-type policing, when other major cities face identical problems of a national nature, is debatable.
The Home Secretary made precisely such a point three years ago, when he said that the formula did not provide sufficient flexibility. When I intervened on him during that debate to ask what he would do about it, the reply that we received was a definition not a solution. Directing more resources to the Metropolitan police makes things worse, because other police forces have even less money with which to deal with unexpected problems.
Mr. Michael:
I am ever so grateful to the hon. Gentleman for finally giving way. He is rivalling the former right hon. Member for Conwy, Sir Wyn Roberts, who became known as the bardic steamroller for rolling on without taking a break. The hon. Gentleman should surely recognise and acknowledge that North Yorkshire police force will receive a 4 per cent. increase in spending power as a result of the settlement. Only one force will have a cut in its spending power, as I said. That is Surrey, with a cut of 1 per cent. The other authority to receive a difficult settlement is Lincolnshire, as I have acknowledged, with a settlement of 1.1 per cent. Most other forces receive a settlement at or above the national average of 3.7 per cent. The hon. Gentleman ought to stick to facts.
Mr. Greenway:
I must tell the hon. Gentleman that all the figures that I have quoted are in letters to hon. Members, which I would quite willingly give to him or place in the Library. He is correct to say that North Yorkshire police will receive a 4 per cent. increase. In many respects, we welcome that. It is a marginally higher settlement, but it does not alter my argument that in North Yorkshire there will not be a mounted branch whereas it was argued that London must have a mounted branch and therefore must receive an extra £21 million.
What can we conclude from all this? Judging by what the Home Secretary said when he last spoke in the House on this matter, this police grant settlement fails to address any of the issues that he thought so important that he voted against the proposed grant three years ago. Should that come as any great surprise? I think not. All the evidence shows that increasing police service resources is not a priority for the Government. Not only was there no commitment to provide extra resources in Labour's election manifesto, but precious little has been said on the matter since the election.
In the 1995 police grant debate, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) asked the then shadow Home Secretary how much more money the Labour party thought the Conservative Government should spend on the police. In reply, the right hon. Gentleman suggested that my hon. Friend should wait until the Conservatives were in opposition, when they would hear the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) announce in his Budget details of Labour's spending plans. We are still waiting. We have had not one but two Budgets since the election. There have been two opportunities to tell us about how important resourcing the fight against crime is to the new Government, but there has not been a word about the police--not even a Home Office press release in the Budget pack made available to hon. Members through the Vote Office. Nothing. Not a word. Just silence. So much for Labour being tough on crime.
Mr. Hancock:
To hear the hon. Gentleman speak one would imagine that, when in power, the Tories were very generous to the police. This settlement is virtually identical to the one that they proposed last year. Will the hon. Gentleman explain how the number of police officers in England and Wales fell over the last four years of the Tory Government?
Mr. Greenway:
I am coming to that, as the Minister knows, because we have had that argument before, although not during the full police grant debate.
What has the Minister, previously merely the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, had to say? In recent years he has made much of what he saw as the previous Government's failure to deliver an extra 1,000 officers, yet every independent assessment of the Conservative record bears out the claim that funding was increased in real terms--and we now have the Home Secretary's ringing endorsement of that fact in his own press release.
We also know that more police constables were recruited as a result of what the previous Government did. The Minister has referred to the Audit Commission report. I refer him to paragraph 50 of that report, which says:
The Audit Commission report also confirmed, in paragraph 48:
"the 18 officers we had hoped to appoint will not now be recruited . . . The money will be put back into the pot to take up the shortfall in the budget."
Perhaps the Minister can stop off to apologise on his way home this weekend to his constituency of Cardiff, South and Penarth.
"most forces had increases in their funding in real terms between 1993/94 and 1996/97".
The report's statistical analysis shows that 32 police forces had real-terms increases and only six had reductions. One of those, by the way, was North Yorkshire. It is interesting that Durham, in which Sedgefield lies, had the biggest increase of all.
"the average time police constables spent in public increased by 4 per cent. between 1994/95 and 1996/97 . . . Coupled with the increased numbers in police constables, this means significantly more bobbies on the beat".
4 Feb 1998 : Column 1075
That is not what we say but what the Audit Commission report, which the Minister prayed in aid, said.
The Minister has already confirmed to me in a written answer that between April 1992 and March last year the number of constables increased by 2,322. He says that the number of police officers fell by 469, but it is well known throughout the police service that, by flattening the management structure and civilianising police posts, senior ranks throughout the police service were intentionally reduced. In the Metropolitan police alone, between March 1994 and March 1996 the number of senior officers of the rank of chief inspector and above fell by 255. It is in those ranks, not among police constables on the streets, that the number of police officers fell.
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