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3.22 pm
Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con): So far, we have heard from the north, the south-west, London and the east. Now it is the turn of the west midlands—specifically, the West Mercia constabulary.
I pay unqualified tribute to the West Mercia constabulary. Whenever I have raised an operational problem, it has responded magnificently. When it has made mistakes, it has admitted them and tackled them well. I have nothing but praise for Bob Forster, the chairman of the police authority, Paul West, the new chief constable and all the officers who work under him, especially in my constituency.
We experience specific challenges. West Mercia is a low crime area, and it is wrong to fear crime in my constituency to the same extent as in London. However, the police have to deal with genuine problems, especially antisocial behaviour, which is a huge menace in large parts of my constituency, and illegal travellers. Rural forces have to contend with such issues, which pose genuine challenges to the constabulary's resources.
I want to make two key points. First, police numbers have increased in West Mercia and, on balance, I am pleased about that. I say "on balance" because the
council tax payer has borne the entire cost of paying for the extra officers. Not one penny of Government money has gone towards increasing the number of officers in my constituency. Two years ago there was an increase of 300 officers, and that was financed by the 33 per cent. increase in the council tax precept in one year.I am delighted that there are more officers, but I will not see the Government take the credit. The council tax payers of the West Mercia constabulary area should do that. The Government cannot brag about an increase in police numbers because they have not funded it. My constituents—the council tax payers—have paid for those additional officers.
My second point is almost parenthetical. It is a marker for the future rather than the present. I want to ensure the maintenance of the independence of the West Mercia constabulary. I am fearful of the Government's plans for regionalisation of the fire service and I worry that the same could happen to police services. I do not want the West Mercia constabulary to be merged into a larger West Midlands police force. The urban area that the West Midlands authority currently serves has a different set of problems, and I am delighted that the West Mercia constabulary remains separate, able to serve the larger rural areas of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, and to have people, such as me, speaking up for its concerns. I hope that the Government will not toy with regionalising the police service.
My text is the "Draft 3 Year Strategy, Joint Policing Plan and Budget Consultation 2004/5", which West Mercia constabulary recently produced. It was sent to all Members of Parliament and other interested bodies in the constabulary area. It points out:
- "Policing is funded in part from central government grant and in part from the council taxpayer. This year the government's provisional grant has increased by 2.8 per cent. against a minimum 6.6 per cent. increase in the Police Authority budget required to cover current obligations."
I am broadly convinced that the increased obligations on several public sector organisations—district and county councils, as well as the police—are much higher than the Government admit. They want to take the credit for doing many things, but they will not pick up the bill for achieving them. The Government also impose increasingly strenuous reporting obligations on public services locally. That, too, imposes huge costs on organisations such as West Mercia police authority.
I am worried because the police authority document states:
- "In order to maintain and develop the existing level of service and respond to external pressures, new legislation and unavoidable requirements, local council taxpayers will have to pay an increased share of the police budget. The calculated increase to permit this is an extra £18.40 per annum or 36p per week for a Band D property, which equates to a 15.4 per cent. rise."
The increase that the police authority proposes is smaller than what the chief constable wanted. He asked for an overall budget increase of 7.9 per cent., which would mean an increase of 19.4 per cent. in the police precept. The police authority has therefore already trimmed the chief constable's requirements, which would have meant an extra £23.27 a year for the average band D council tax payer. I am deeply worried about that. Clearly, the police authority is already cutting back on what it believes the chief constable needs to fulfil his policing requirements in my constituency.
The increase will lead to a further modest increase in police officers and the development of sufficient supervisory ranks to improve the performance of existing officers. However, a part of the relevant paragraph in the police authority document worries me. It states:
- "This level of police officers would bring the force close to an average level for Shire forces"—
- "and complies with the Government's wish to see a strengthening of police officers nationally."
There is also the thorny question of the area cost adjustment applied to police authority funding. I remind the Minister that West Mercia is surrounded by authorities that receive the area cost adjustment. The West Midlands, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire police all receive the area cost adjustment but are fishing in exactly the same labour pool as the West Mercia constabulary. Indeed, many officers of West Midlands police live in my constituency, and when I canvass them at election time and between elections, they tell me about life in Birmingham. The West Midlands police authority is rewarded with extra money for the additional costs involved in the recruitment of police officers who have chosen to live in my constituency. By logic, the West Mercia authority should receive the same additional funding.
I have two specific points to put to the Minister. First, my police authority was very pleased to receive a letter at the end of last year informing it that there would be an extra £340 million for English local authorities. It wrote
back to ask how much of that it was going to get; the answer, of course, was absolutely nothing. It was very sweet of Ministers to ensure that a letter went to that police authority to tell it about extra money that other authorities would get. Why did it get a letter telling it about that additional money, when not a penny of it was coming to policing?Secondly, will the Minister confirm that, as Robert Forster has said in a letter to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the claim that there has been a 3.25 per cent. increase in overall police funding is just not true? The increase is actually 2.8 per cent., as I believe she previously admitted, because the figure includes
- "the transfer of ring-fenced initiatives into mainstream grant funding".
I have a real concern for my police authority, which I hold in high regard, and the policemen and women of my area, whom I also hold in high regard. There is a perception abroad in the country that there is a war on motorists rather than a war on burglars. I say that that is a perception, and it may or may not be fair, but that is how people feel. Yet the council tax payers see the police demanding more and more money from them, year on year, through huge increases in council tax. I am worried that the Government's strategy for funding the police, and their strategy towards motorists, might well conspire to remove much popular support for the police, not just in my constituency but up and down the country.
The message is simple: if the Government will the ends, they must will the means. They are not doing that in this report.
3.32 pm
Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): I shall be brief, because there is a danger that this debate can seem like an annual bleat to the Minister, in which a succession of MPs stand up and say how appalling things are in their area, and the Minister then winds up by saying that everything in the garden is lovely and they have never had it so good.
I am a veteran at making complaints on behalf of my police authority, Merseyside. Those complaints date back to when the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was in the Home Office. At that time, I went to see him with the then Conservative leader of my police authority—that was the only time that my police authority had a Conservative leader. We were shown into a room and treated very politely and courteously, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman listened to us from behind a desk the size of which I had never seen before, but at the end of the day we got absolutely nothing from him. Despite that, and despite a subsequent succession of discouraging experiences with Ministers, I remain optimistic that this Minister will respond to reason.
The fact of the matter is that my residents still complain. They complain about standard things that residents in other parts of the country also complain about, including thin police cover, slow response and the constant rotation of staff and personnel. That is a particular problem in community policing. It is all very well for someone to bed themselves in their community,
but if they are moved soon afterwards, as often happens in my neck of the woods, it creates an ongoing problem with no solution.I know, objectively, that the statistics are not favourably pitched for me to make my particular plea to the Minister because the per capita funding for Merseyside is pretty high—if not very high—compared with other authorities. The norm may not be good, but Merseyside is not comparatively worse off than other areas. However, Merseyside has its own problems. A significant amount of the Merseyside police authority budget goes on pensions. I was discouraged to learn the other day that, whereas in Manchester early retirements from the police authority are at 4 per cent., in Merseyside they are at 12 per cent. I ponder the reasons for that statistic, but that does not help more money to be distributed to police officers and less to pensions. We must also recognise, as does Merseyside police authority, that a problem of sickness in the force also consumes a certain amount of resources.
The reality is that the people of Merseyside feel that policing is not all that it could be. Although crime is down, so is police presence. The people face a very high increase in the precept this year, and that is not just because of Merseyside's settlement. An awful lot of property across Merseyside is in band A, which makes a difference to the impact of the precept.
I shall detain the Minister with an explanation of Merseyside's problems. It is not my explanation, but that offered by the retiring chief constable, Norman Bettison, to whom I pay tribute. He has done an exceptionally good job on Merseyside in his limited time there. He has made the entirely fair point that Liverpool is a port of access, which means a port of access for two major problems in this country at the moment: drugs and terrorism. The Government acknowledge that intellectually, and if they made inquiries in the police community I am sure that they would find the point entirely valid. But acknowledging something intellectually and doing so financially are not quite the same thing. As the chief constable would undoubtedly point out were he here, the situation on Merseyside—in comparison with the rest of the country—means that its police have to spend much time, resources and manpower on only a few, but none the less important, investigations into terrorism and the drugs trade. The areas that ultimately suffer from that include Southport, which is, in a sense, on the fringe.
I simply ask the Minister for a little hope. I should like her to consider seriously the distribution of community wardens, whom the Home Office often allocates to the pathfinder areas.
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