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2.48 pm
Paddy Tipping (Sherwood) (Lab): The settlement is important for people who live in Nottinghamshire, as is the debate. On 25 February, the police authority will consider the precept increase—the indicative figure is 12.6 per cent. That comes on top of a growth in the current year of 18 per cent., and a growth in 2002–03 of 28 per cent. Over the space of three years, the council tax payers in Nottingham have been asked to pay more than 60 per cent. extra. People on fixed incomes, elderly people, the poor and those who are more prone to crime than others must ask whether they are getting value for money.
We in Nottinghamshire are in a position to make some judgments about that. Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary reported last March that not only were we not getting value for money, but that the police in Nottinghamshire were not efficient or effective. HMIC reported again at the end of last year and concluded that there had been a small improvement. That had come at a very late stage, but at least it was an improving police force. I commend the officers on the beat in Nottinghamshire for their hard work. The HMIC report went on to say that, compared with other authorities, the performance of the Nottinghamshire police was relatively poor.
There are strong feelings among residents of Nottinghamshire that they are not getting a fair deal from their police. That view is supported by all the Nottinghamshire Members of Parliament. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) is present, sitting on the Front Bench. He has campaigned hard for local authorities to work on antisocial behaviour, and for better co-operation between the police and the local authority, because he knows that in places such as Netherfield, the yobbish behaviour affects people. He knows, too, that people living in Arnold were mortified by the tragic death of Marian Bates. I am delighted, as is my hon. Friend, that an arrest has been made and that it looks as though the efforts of the Nottinghamshire police are making progress. We want a successful conclusion.
We should acknowledge that alongside progress, there have been management failings. It was the chief constable who introduced a new telephone system two years ago, which was ineffective. It was the chief constable and the police who decided to realign boundaries alongside district council boundaries, again for good reasons, but that change caused problems and led to a fall in morale in the Nottinghamshire police. Again, it was a management decision that rapid response squads should be taken away from a local base and placed centrally. There was a strong feeling in the community that people were being denied their police. Of course, when police come from another town, they are not familiar with local problems, and sometimes have difficulty finding the scene of the crime.
Such management failings build on a long tradition of complacency. We have a new—or rather, a not so new—chief constable, Stephen Green, who has been in place for three years and has brought in radical change. If there is criticism of the chief constable, it is that he has introduced too much change. There have been difficulties in trying to handle change on that scale. Change and investment go together. Reform needs investment, but investment should be a precondition for reform. I am not confident that we have the balance right in Nottinghamshire. I want to see improved performance from the Nottinghamshire police, but we need to examine carefully what is happening in the force. They are, they argue strongly, under-resourced.
There are more crimes per officer in Nottinghamshire than anywhere else. In terms of crimes per 1,000 of population, Nottinghamshire tops the league. There are twice the number of 999 calls to the Nottinghamshire police. That shows the demands made on the force, but it has not all been bad news. Nottinghamshire police have record numbers of police officers—an extra 264 over the past few years, backed by 43 community support officers, who do valuable work in local communities. My fellow MPs from the area and I want to see more uniformed community support officers working in conjunction with the local authorities for change.
We need to ask why crime is traditionally so high in Nottinghamshire. Will my hon. Friend the Minister, in co-operation with HMIC and the police standards unit, investigate why for 20 years the crime rate in Nottinghamshire appears to have been higher than anywhere else in the country? There is a history of heavy drinking and violent behaviour, but it is not clear why Nottinghamshire, with a big urban centre, mining communities and a rural area, should appear to be so atypical. We need to examine that closely. We must also consider current crime trends in Nottinghamshire. Ten years ago there would be eight or nine murders a year. In the past two years the Nottinghamshire police have had to investigate 17 category A murders, and that takes a tremendous amount of resources.
Those crimes generally occur in Nottingham. The effect is that police are brought from outside the city, leaving a policing vacuum in suburban and rural areas. The police are on the case; they take the matter seriously. They are to set up a homicide unit, creating a pool of officers at the centre, backed by better technology. However, further work is required. The police in Nottinghamshire are considering the possibility of establishing a serious offending unit—a group based in the centre, so that officers are not sucked away from their area, and so that when assassinations take place, driven largely by drug-related crime, there is a separate unit that can respond to the situation. Much work is being done, funded by the police authority's budget, to establish such a unit.
It is important that we examine the level of serious crime in Nottinghamshire. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister, who has discussed the matter with us privately, is to go to Nottinghamshire on Monday. She will meet a range of people there and speak to the chief constable and to the chairman of the police authority, John Clarke. I hope the discussion will be on
the twin themes of investment and reform. I hope that she and all of us will build on the work of pulling together the various bodies in Nottinghamshire. HMIC and the standards unit have been working closely together. When she visits Nottinghamshire, I should like my hon. Friend to deliver a new vision, a new sense of purpose, an awareness of the problem, a set of actions and a timetable to achieve change. People in Nottinghamshire deserve nothing less.2.58 pm
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): Throughout the country, people are sick and tired of the council tax, and of large increases in their council tax. They are sick and tired of increases in their council tax without any appreciable improvement in the service they receive. Although I have a great deal of respect and time for the Minister, it is no good blathering on about the improvements in police numbers if the Government are not prepared to put in the resources to pay for them. It is no good blathering on about keeping council tax increases down to a reasonable—sustainable, as she puts it—level, if the Government are not prepared to ensure the proper balance between central Government expenditure and local government expenditure.
The inconvenient truth hidden in the police grant report that we are debating, which was outlined by the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), is that there are police forces and police authorities all over the country that will not put in bids this year for council tax increases of 5, 6 or 7 per cent. They will be well into double figures, as even a cursory glance at the list of expected increases reveals, although I accept that that may change over the next few days as budget meetings take place. Avon and Somerset expects an increase of 12 per cent.; Bedfordshire, 15.9 per cent.; Cambridgeshire, 14.1 per cent.; Cheshire, up to 18 per cent.; Devon and Cornwall, 12.5 per cent.; and Durham, 20 per cent. I shall not read the complete list, but it is clear that the vast majority of police authorities expect substantial increases in council tax this year, which build on increases that have been made year after year. Someone has to say, "Enough is enough." No one begrudges paying for policing: people want more police on their streets and welcome what the Government have done to increase the number of officers across the country. In that respect, their only criticism of the Government is that it took them two to three years to distance themselves from the tired Conservative policy of not providing any increases in police numbers. The hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) said that perhaps that was not wise. In fact, it was blindly stupid of the Government in their first term not to recognise the need to fight crime effectively.
There is a problem, and I hope that the Minister will give us the list of 10 police authorities to which she intends to write, and tell us what she intends to say to them. Will she tell them that they are to cut police numbers, or that they are to cut civilian numbers and return those duties to uniformed officers? Will she tell them that they are to reduce the effectiveness of their operations? Of course not. She will say that they must magically produce the money that the Government have
not provided. The question of whether the Government intend to cap police authorities, which face a funding gap of £250 million, remains unanswered.
Mr. Roger Williams : If my hon. Friend cannot help me, perhaps the Minister can when she replies. Which Ministry would be responsible for any possible cap of Welsh police authorities?
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