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Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North and Sefton, East) (Lab): Before the hon. Gentleman moves on to his next point, which I anticipate will be important, may I make the point that my constituents, too, feel that the exceptional burdens on Merseyside police authority because of organised crime and the other difficulties that he has referred to should be better recognised in the formula? There should not be a financial penalty for living in an area that has a higher than normal amount of organised crime.
Dr. Pugh: The hon. Gentleman knows from experience, including as an MP, what he is talking about. His point is well founded.
Returning to community support officers, I have listened to hon. Members speak about how excellent and useful those wardens are. Certainly, when I come to London I find myself falling over them on my way into the Houses of Parliament. However, they are not on the streets of my constituency, where they could do such an important job in keeping down low-level crime, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) described. Will the Minister note that point? I am really asking her to give the force and the people of Merseyside—specifically the people of Southport—a little optimism that funding will recognise our genuine problems and needs. Even if what she offers is geared to Merseyside's having to sort out some of its housekeeping difficulties, that can only be progress, and a move in the right direction.
3.38 pm
Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey) (LD): I am happy to participate in this debate. Until a few years ago, there was a regular debate on London policing but now that policing has, quite properly, been handed over to democratically elected local government, the only opportunity to raise such matters is in the context of the funding settlement. I am grateful, as are all of us who live and work in London, for the Metropolitan Police and all that they do for us. I pay tribute to them. That does not mean that one cannot sometimes be constructively critical over the way in which they go about their work, and we all reserve that right.
I shall put clearly the position from which I come to the debate. I and my colleagues who are members of the London Assembly support the proposal put forward by the Metropolitan Police Authority for its budget. That proposal is higher than that which the Government are willing to fund, which is why there is a protest from London—across many party divides, and as cited in the letter from Sir Robin Wales, the chair of the Association of London Government and a Labour councillor—that the Government are not serving London well in the funding settlement on which we are to vote in a few minutes. That is why my London colleagues and I will vote against it. If we were to succeed in that vote, the Government would have to come back with something better. They would have to come back with more money from the taxpayer for policing, not just for London but for the other police authorities in England and Wales.
London has about a quarter of England and Wales's police officers, and about a quarter of the budget. It is by a long way the largest authority. We have the highest rate of crime per person in England and Wales. That is not surprising; it is common to capital cities. As in many other places, crime is one of the top three concerns of the residents and, sadly, the figures are still far too high. We have more than 1 million recorded crimes in London every year. Everyone hopes that we can go the way of New York. I was there recently, and I saw a headline in the local paper which read, "Crime at its lowest for 35 years", which is a wonderful tribute.
The Government have again come to a debate avoiding giving answers to some of the difficult questions, but we are pushing for answers. We pushed when the Conservatives were in government, and they promised that we would get answers. We did not, and we are now pushing for them from the Labour Government. Is the formula linked to the crime level? What is the link between paying for policing and the level of crime in an area? If crime goes down, should we expect to receive less? If London has a quarter of the crimes committed nationally, for example, should it expect to get a quarter of the Government budget for policing? Or should the funding relate to efficiency? Should a police authority be rewarded for bringing crime levels down? The Government never answered that question in describing the formula. Most importantly, what should be the Government's contribution—that is, the taxpayer's contribution—and what should be the council tax payer's contribution? We shall unarguably see a further significant imposition on council tax payers across the country, as a direct result of what the Government are proposing.
Mr. Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton, North-East) (Lab/Co-op): I realise that the hon. Gentleman is speaking for the capital city, and that is extremely important, but why should people with the highest per capita income in the country expect to get a greater fraction of taxpayers' money for their council purposes than people in the west midlands, for instance, who have a far lower per capita income and higher council tax to pay?
Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman raises a perfectly proper point. I am not arguing that case. He will know that there is a huge disparity in his region, as in mine, in that many people will be paying a large amount of council tax—because of the value of their property—although their income is small and they have no savings. They have one asset, namely their home, which they cannot realise. That is why my hon. Friends and I are clear, as we have been for so long, that the council tax is inappropriate and unfair. I believe that that case is being made increasingly effectively, and that we shall soon see an end to the council tax. I am not making an anti-west midlands case, or a case against any other police authority.
I shall cite the relevant figures, not from a document that I have written but from that of Sir Robin Wales, who has said:
- "the disappointing treatment of the Metropolitan Police Authority means that the increase in grant to London overall"
Everyone wants more police and more community support officers. Like the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), who represents part of the London
borough of Havering, I also support the idea that there should be a freedom to choose how we spend the money, and that we should not have ring-fenced funds for community support officers.The national and capital responsibilities budget has gone up, as the Minister rightly said, but it has gone up from £202 million to £207 million, which, by my calculation, is 2.5 per cent. I cannot believe that the additional work on those issues in London over the last year has only been 2.5 per cent.'s worth—that is even lower than the rate of inflation.
There is a huge issue in relation to abstractions. I have some figures here for last year: Lambeth lost 3,400 police officers in abstractions to other, national duties; Southwark lost 3,100 officers; Merton lost 902; and Kingston lost 1,037. Those abstractions were for national anti-terrorism and other duties. If we consider all the reasons for abstractions, we see that my borough lost 597 officer days in the last year, and even boroughs at the bottom of the league table, in areas such as Bexley, for example, lost 227.
Please, please, please, Government, get on with sorting out the pensions liability. The council tax payer is increasingly having to pay the pensions of yesteryear, rather than for the policing of today. Please also allow all parts of London to have the increase in policing that we want. I do not have the figures for Havering in front of me, but I know that in Southwark in March 1997, when this Government came to power, we had 1,157 police and civilians. In March 2000, we had 1,110, and now we have 1,014. We have fewer people in the police service in our borough now than in either 2000 or 1997. This is not a party matter: the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) joined us in our campaign.
People in London want a fair settlement. They want the Government to pay their way, and they want a minimum policing guarantee for each community. I hope that, on this issue, whatever Ministers do in relation to the outgoing Mayor or to other matters, they will accept that the figure for policing in London should be agreed across the parties and should not be capped. If they want to cap the Mayor in other ways, they are entitled to do so, but policing in London needs to be protected. The Government should foot more of the bill, not the London council tax payer.
3.46 pm
Ms Blears: We have had a short debate but hon. Members have raised a number of important issues. I am pleased about that, because effective policing and community safety is one of the most pressing matters in the vast majority of our communities.
I was a little disappointed that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) resurrected a policy that I thought had been put to bed, namely the Conservatives' proposal to increase the force by another 40,000 police officers. They have been remarkably quiet about that since the previous shadow Home Secretary left his post, and the new shadow Home Secretary has certainly not majored on that policy. The hon. Gentleman will recall, as I do, that in our debate on community policing a couple of months ago, how
interesting it was to watch that figure of 40,000 being reduced to 20,000, and then to some 15,000, in the course of the debate.
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