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1.46 pm

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): I beg to move, To leave out from "country;" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"notes that the previous administration's promises in 1992 and 1995 of an additional 6,000 police officers were never carried through and that police numbers instead fell; welcomes the additional£1.24 billion for the police service and the extra £400 million for the crime reduction programme which are to be provided over the next three years; supports the police in their crucial role in tackling crime and creating safer communities; and recognises the need for the police, as with other public services, to continue to improve efficiency and effectiveness and deliver best value in the interests of the whole country."

The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield(Sir N. Fowler) started his speech with a tribute to Britain's police service, and I fully associate myself and my Government with that tribute. However, I crave his indulgence in not following him on the issues raised in the Lawrence report. He was not necessarily to know it when preparing his notes, but--as he and other hon. Members will now know from the business statement by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House--there will be a full day's debate on the Lawrence report on Monday 29 March. As I told the House when making my statement on 24 February, I shall publish, next week, a full statement providing our full response, recommendation by recommendation, so that hon. Members are better informed of our response well in advance of that debate.

Central to the claims made today by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield was the claim that police numbers started to decline only after the previous

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general election, and that that has been the responsibility only of the current Government. I should like to put the record straight. During both the 1970s and the 1980s, police numbers overall rose by 25,000. Although I should be happy to trade statistics--I should enjoy it--if the right hon. Gentleman wants to do so on the 1980s and very early 1990s, he should bear it in mind that the annual increase in the police service was just over 1,000, whereas the annual increase during the Labour Government of 1974-79 was 2,000.

The overall 25,000 increase stopped at the beginning of the 1990s. It did so because the then Conservative Government made a calculated decision to end the increase in police numbers. As in many similar decisions, however, the only thing that the previous Government did not do was to announce their decision. That is confirmed by the then Home Secretary, now Lord Baker, at page 450 of his memoirs. He said:

"I found, however, that while several of my ministerial colleagues and Tory MPs supported the police in public, they were highly critical of them in private. There was impatience, if not anger, that although we had spent 87 per cent. more in real terms since 1979, and had increased police numbers . . . there had still been a substantial rise in crime. 'Where is the value for money?' asked my colleagues.


I had even heard Margaret Thatcher criticize the management and the leadership of the police."

Lord Baker went on to describe the negotiations that he was having with the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Mellor, who said that his time as a Minister at the Home Office had not

"turned him into a friend of the police."

He said that Mr. Mellor had said of police--words that I should never use:

"They are overpaid, we've thrown money at them, and we have the highest level of crime in our history."

That marked a clear decision by the previous Government in the early 1990s to stabilise expenditure on the police and to preside over a decline in numbers. In 1993, there were 128,300 police officers. By March 1997--only weeks before the general election--that number had fallen by 1,132. By March 1998, it had fallen to 126,856 and, by September 1998--the latest date for which figures are available--the overall figure had fallen to 126,500.

What makes this debate such a spectacular own goal for the Conservatives is that all that decline took place during the period of budgets that they set. In 1998-99, I have presided over a higher rate of increase in spending than that was originally earmarked by the Conservative Government.

Sir Norman Fowler: The right hon. Gentleman said that spending, as well as manpower, was stabilised in the 1990s. Will he now take the opportunity to correct that reply and to agree that in 1991-92 there was a 6.3 per cent. real-terms increase in spending, in 1992-93 there was a 3.6 per cent. increase, in 1993-94 there was a2.1 per cent. increase, in 1994-95 spending was stable, in 1995-96 there was an increase of 2.6 per cent. and in 1996-97 there was an increase of 2.5 per cent? In five out of six years there were substantial real increases in spending. If the right hon. Gentleman is puzzled, he should consult the House of Commons Library statistics department.

Mr. Straw: I was looking puzzled because the right hon. Gentleman's run of figures does not square

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with mine. We can exchange figures later. I am interested in arguing from the figures. I accept that, as Kenneth Baker said, real-terms expenditure on the police rose by 87 per cent. until the early 1990s, and police numbers reached their peak in 1993. However, the issue is whether the increase in spending had fed into police numbers.

Extraordinarily, some hon. Members whose areas are receiving large increases in police budgets for next year, such as the 6.1 per cent. increase for Derbyshire, are complaining about forward spending under the plans for which we are responsible. I do not remember hearing Conservative Members complaining about the huge decrease in Metropolitan police numbers over which they presided. It was a decrease not of 200 or 300 or 1,000; 2,000 Metropolitan officers were cut between 1992 and the time of the most recent figures--all under budgets that were set or earmarked by previous Home Secretaries. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis expects numbers next year to be within 75 of the numbers this year.

Those are the facts. The previous Government made a covert decision not to increase police numbers, but they then made a public promise to increase police numbers--a promise that they comprehensively broke. Sometimes I weep for the Conservatives, because, if only they had consulted us, we could have told them that the least that they should do is make promises on which they will not be completely exposed within a few months.

In their 1992 manifesto, the Conservatives promised to increase police numbers by 1,000 officers. Did they? Of course, they did not. They were 400 short. Having broken that promise, the then Prime Minister--never one to break the habit of a lifetime--decided to utter another promise in 1995, which he then went on to break. At the Conservative party conference in 1995, he said:

"we have found the resources over the next three years to put, not 500 but an extra 5,000 police officers on the beat."

What happened? Was the increase 5,000? Was it 500? No, it was zero. Numbers went down. In the period when the Conservatives promised 5,000 extra officers, numbers went down by 470--and Conservative Members wonder why they lost the last election, and why they completely lost the plot on law and order.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud): I was genuinely intrigued that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield(Sir N. Fowler) did not mention police pensions in his speech. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the significant problems with the budgetary situation is the pensions overhang?

Mr. Straw: I agree, and a large number of unexploded time bombs--well past their set date--were left in the drawer of the desk that I inherited from my predecessor. The Conservatives deliberately decided not to publish a review of police pensions, even though they knew that action had to be taken.

The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield made a serious point when he said that there had been some increase in real spending in the 1990s, and he implied that that should have fed its way into an increase in police numbers. However, he omitted to say that, in the Police and Magistrates Courts Act 1994--for which he voted--the powers of the then Home Secretary to set police

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numbers were removed. My predecessor as Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), said:

"In future the number of constables will be a matter for local decision . . . It is not a matter for me."--[Official Report, 26 April 1994; Vol. 242, c. 113.]

The previous Government said that they had no power to determine police numbers--and then, only months later, they were promising to do just that.

That is what is so incredible about the Conservatives' promises. They promised 5,000 officers--a promise which, by law, they prevented themselves from ever meeting. Rarely has there been such a reckless set of promises made by any party--even one as intent on defeat as the Conservative party.

Sir Norman Fowler: I am interested to explore what the Home Secretary is saying. On 31 January 1995, he led his party to vote against a police grant which was substantially greater than any provided by the Labour Government, including the last one. One of his reasons for that was that he was getting complaints from chief police officers that numbers were going down around the country. Is he saying now that that was the wrong decision, or that he should not have used that argument to justify the Labour party's voting against the police grant?

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