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Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath): As the Minister of State has already conceded, Surrey is one of the counties that has been hit by a cut in police grant. Does my hon. Friend agree that people in Surrey will be concerned because, unlike many other counties, including Durham, they will not see a continuing increase in the number of constables on the beat because the Labour Government have broken many of the promises that they gave earlier and cut funding for counties such as Surrey?
Mr. Greenway: Certainly the people of Surrey will wonder why they are paying a 28 per cent. council tax increase so that more police officers can be available in the Metropolitan police district, while they get fewer.
Mr. Michael: In replying to his hon. Friend, will the hon. Member acknowledge that it is not the present settlement that affects the figure for Surrey, but the application of the needs-based formula, which the previous Government put in place?
Mr. Greenway: No, it is not. The Home Secretary has decided arbitrarily--as the Minister has told us today--to remove rule 1 and rule 3.
Mr. Michael: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Greenway: No. The Minister has asked me a question and I have given him the answer. He must know that that is what has happened. He himself said that that
was the cause of the reductions in Lincolnshire and in Surrey. Who made the decision? It was this Government--not the last Government. He must take responsibility for that decision.
Mr. Michael: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Greenway: No, I will not give way again. I have given the Minister an answer. He is putting forward a sterile argument. Rule 1 and rule 3 were introduced to ensure that every police authority got a fair share of the increased money. The fact is that those two rules have been removed, and that is the cause of the problems in Surrey and in Lincolnshire.
Mr. Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Greenway: No. I must make progress. Many hon. Members want to speak in this short debate. There are many matters yet to be considered.
A key factor in the increase in the number of constables to which I referred was the initiative by the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), in 1995 to provide the resources to enable the police service to recruit up to 5,000 more officers over three years. Although that initiative was derided by the Minister and by Labour in opposition, we now find that the Government have provided the money for the third stage of the programme.
Let me be clear about this. The Opposition warmly welcome the Government's decision to provide the additional £40 million for the third slice of extra money. On that, at least, there is agreement, and it has been generally welcomed in the police service as well. I only wish that I could be more convinced of the Government's enthusiasm. Their attitude to this project is best summed up by what the Minister said a year ago. He said that the Government were
Doubtless the Minister discovered how wrong he was when he examined the figures in preparation for this year's police grant. He found a specific grant of £60 million for extra officers which is replicated in this grant settlement document. Along with the £40 million extra to which I have referred, that means that the police benefit to the tune of £100 million this year as a direct consequence of the former Prime Minister's initiative. The importance of this to police budgets cannot be overstated; it is acknowledged by the fact that this £100 million is excluded from capping limits.
On the question of capping, the police element of the council tax is not sufficiently transparent. This settlement produces vast discrepancies across the country. How can it make sense for residents in Staffordshire to face a 32 per cent. rise in what they pay towards the police through the council tax when, in the neighbouring West Midlands area, residents are likely to see a 7 per cent. cut?
In Surrey, residents will pay 28 per cent. more, whereas in Kent there will be a 5 per cent. reduction. In Cumbria, there will be a rise of 24 per cent., yet in Northumbria, Durham and Cleveland there will be a reduction.
More to the point, research from the Library estimates that, of the £63 million increase in overall spending power for the Metropolitan police, £37 million will be funded by council tax payers; almost 60 per cent. of the extra money will be met by residents. What is undeniably perverse about this year's settlement is that, in some areas, the police element of the council tax will go down while the police will be forced to make cuts in their planned budgets. Those cuts inevitably mean that money supposedly for additional officers will be used to help maintain existing commitments. That is why the Minister has made no predictions regarding police numbers, and why I believe we shall never persuade him to do so.
As if all that is not bad enough, the Association of Police Authorities has confirmed that support for capital projects has been cut by 12.7 per cent., or £26 million. It is shameful that the Government have done that and how the Minister can possibly justify that cut in the face of his past statements beggars belief. The obvious lesson is that criticism is easy, but having the responsibility for taking hard decisions is much more difficult. The Minister should not be in the least surprised at being reminded of his more outspoken remarks when in opposition. Judged by what he and his right hon. and hon. Friends said in the past, this police grant settlement does not pass muster.
Judging by their past remarks about police services, we cannot doubt that Ministers are fully aware of what is required to sustain and improve the quality of the police service. What is in doubt is their commitment. There is precious little evidence that supporting the police service with extra money and not just fine words is a priority for new Labour. We in the House today and those in the country at large need to be clear that the problems for the police services and the increases in council tax bills that will flow from this settlement are the responsibility of the Government and no one else. New Labour's manifesto may have been short on specific promises, but their rhetoric and conduct in recent years has generated high expectations. From what they have said in the past, we know what those expectations are; sadly, they will not be fulfilled by this grant settlement.
Several hon. Members rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
The Front Bench speeches have now taken 48 minutes of a 90-minute debate. I appeal to hon. Members to make brief speeches so that I can try to accommodate all those who are seeking to catch my eye.
Gillian Merron (Lincoln):
I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Minister's clear commitment on behalf of the Government to tackle and prevent crime through good policing as well as through legislative measures. Those are the actions of a responsible Government.
I regret that I am the isolated voice of local concern in the House today as the only Lincolnshire Member of Parliament present. As we have heard, Lincolnshire is one of only two police authorities that are losing out--to the
tune of more than £2.5 million in 1998-99. In December, because of that, I made urgent arrangements to meet my hon. Friend the Minister and at our meeting I set out my concerns about cuts in Government funding, which we in Lincolnshire fear might cost the police force up to 80 officers--a number that we can ill afford to lose. It is understood that there are many heavy pressures on spending and lines need to be drawn, but I regret that the effect of where the Lincolnshire line is drawn is that council tax payers in my constituency will pay more, but receive less. That is most unwelcome.
We are in that worrying position because the previous Government established a formula that did not take accurate account of Lincolnshire's sparsity of population or needs. For two years, they applied special rules--for political favour, I believe--which have now raised expectations. I would prefer that the previous Government had tackled the issue of a formula that treated Lincolnshire unfairly, but they did not, and we are now where we are.
The outcome of my meeting with the Minister was that he agreed to meet the Lincolnshire police authority and to re-examine the funding formula--assurances I was pleased to secure. The Lincolnshire police authority made an excellent case and alerted the Minister to the value for money offered by the Lincolnshire police authority. The cost of policing in Lincolnshire is 28p per person per day, compared with a national average of 36p. Despite having one police officer for every 500 people, when the national average is one to 400, the apparent implication of the grant formula is that we have too many police officers.
I would not accept that, and nor would the many people and organisations who have made heartfelt representations to me, including the Lincolnshire Tenants Forum, which represents tenants groups across Lincolnshire and works closely with the police in an effort to combat crime and anti-social behaviour. In addition, the chamber of commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Lincoln co-operative society and many other organisations have made concerned representations to me.
Like many other hon. Members, I receive representations from constituents who, as groups of neighbours, come to me as their Member of Parliament to express their concern about local policing. I shall briefly quote a letter I sent to my local police superintendent, who provides an excellent service. The letter was prompted by a group of people, at their wits' end, who came to me, and it illustrates the concerns felt in Lincoln. I wrote that I had been approached by four households
This week is national facial injuries week, as hon. Members may be aware. On Monday, I joined a specialist consultant and a senior police officer at a Lincoln school to help raise awareness of the dangers of the abuse of alcohol and the link to dangerous driving and violent attacks. The police officer spelled out his own experience and, in so doing, may have prevented some of those young people from suffering severe facial and emotional damage or even death. We want our police officers to do that sort of work and do not want funding to be cut and our service to become simply a law-enforcement body. The sort of preventative work and liaison in which I engaged on Monday is what a modern and efficient community police force is all about. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider that point.
"not providing the resources or putting in the money to meet the Prime Minister's promise."--[Official Report, 29 January 1997; Vol. 289, c. 462.]
That was just plain wrong. The assistant chief constable of Gwent clearly thinks that it was wrong, too. He had the money for the 18 officers he planned to recruit, but the Government--through this settlement--have taken it away.
5.11 pm
"who are greatly concerned about the behaviour of a family who lives close to them . . . The group that came to see me believe the parents . . . are involved in drug-dealing and allege that they use the empty house to the left of their residence as a repository for stolen goods. . . . the two elder children of the family are apparently left to run wild about the estate, having both been expelled from school. They and their younger siblings regularly climb out of the bedroom windows to roam the streets in the early hours of the morning. All those who came to see me spoke of being terrorised. The children damage their homes and property, and those of other neighbours, on a regular basis. They also shout abuse at residents"--
and spit at an elderly man who is harassed in the street.
"The trouble has apparently gone on for seven years."
We cannot allow that to continue and we must tackle such situations. I am worried that the impact of the settlement on the Lincolnshire police may curtail their ability to do so.
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