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28 Feb 2007 : Column 261WH—continued
9.50 am
Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) on securing the debate. It is an important subject on which, as he has rightly said, there is a great deal of consensus. By and large, his speech invited consensus—he strayed into occasional political rapier thrusts, but not much more than that.
I want to concentrate on only one aspect of this large subject—regional partnerships and the concrete steps that can be taken to improve their longevity and effectiveness. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) has mentioned, the original reasons behind the proposals for a regional force for the east midlands as a whole or for two larger sub-regional forces were the need to address the shortfall in protective services in the region and to try to ensure that resources were redeployed from the back-office functions of the police forces into the front line. That was the theory behind the idea.
As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, I was not a supporter of the proposals at the time, mainly because I felt that they did not do what they said on the tin, as I said to a number of local meetings that I attended on the subject. I would have endorsed many of the proposals, if it had been clear that they would have improved the quality of protective services for my constituents and had demonstrated means of saving substantial sums of money over a reasonable period of time. Neither of those objectives were enshrined in the proposals that we had to consider. A variety of other things were missing, too, but I shall not go into those.
Let me turn first to the issue of protective services. The O’Connor review highlighted the shortfall in protective services in the east midlands. I think that it is generally agreed—I shall refer to an august opinion that I have obtained privately that backs this up—that the shortfall in protective services is greater in the east midlands than in any other part of the country and that its remedy deserves greater priority. That is in part because the east midlands has no large city base on which protective services are likely to have been developed in the past. We do not have a location such as Greater Manchester, London or the big north-eastern cities on which we can base our expertise and where we can have a solid core of experienced officers who are used to tackling such crime. That is to our merit, to some extent. We have not been troubled by the scale of organised crime and terrorism that has been faced in some other parts of the country, and so there has not been the call to develop such services, but none of us is unrealistic enough to think that that could long continue.
We recognise that there are threats among us and from outside the region that we should counter. It is reasonably obvious from an analysis of the region that
significant threats are likely to be present—a young man who was educated in my constituency was a suicide bomber in Israel. One cannot say that simply because an outrage has never been committed in the east midlands, it is not likely to happen. I am pleased that the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers responded to the obvious shortfall by putting £8 million of funding into the regional initiative. The east midlands special operations unit, which has already been referred to, is based in Ripley and was established at the end of last year. It has already done some sterling work.
The funding is secure only until 2008. One of the purposes of the debate should be to make clear that that funding is required for the long term and that to expect it to be absorbed into the mainstream budgets of the individual police forces that serve our constituencies is wholly unrealistic. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has already set out the budgetary constraints that the forces will face in the long term to absorb the impact of the regional unit. It has been established that that is quite impossible and would mean disabling an important process. The unit does not simply address counter-terrorism requirements. As hon. Members, especially the Minister, will know, I have taken a particular interest in cash machine robbery and assaults on people delivering to shop retail units in my area and elsewhere in the region. The regional unit has spent a good deal of time tracking the organised criminals involved in such violent criminal activity.
I have mentioned the august opinions of others. I had the opportunity to speak to Sir Ronnie Flanagan at a private event a few days ago, and he strongly endorsed the need for the east midlands to have priority in securing additional protective services. He made the confident assertion that he could not see how the funding could be turned off in 2008, and I hope that he is right. He is certainly a senior and well-respected adviser to the Minister, and I hope that he has the Minister’s ear on that matter.
I have had private discussions with the Minister on sharing resources, and he has complimented the region’s forces on co-operating on addressing the need to assemble projects that will save money in the longer term. Most of those who have managed large organisations, as I have, know that reorganisation to achieve substantial savings normally has initial costs. In that circumstance, the Home Office ought to make a budget available to forces that produce high quality business cases for resource sharing and partnership so that they can secure initial funding to start the initiatives that they have researched. At the moment, such resources are not available. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity offered by the debate to say that such initiatives, which are based on a solid track record of savings in all the east midlands forces over the past few years, will be supported by his Ministry.
David Taylor:
My hon. Friend talked about information and communications technology services by implication when he mentioned back-office functions. He will be aware of the bid that the forces are making for links and a gateway, which would cost £400,000 in the first year and less than a third of that in the following years to facilitate access to core systems,
to develop new applications and to provide business continuity across all five east midlands forces. That is a worthwhile initiative. Speaking as someone who was an information and communications technology manager in the public sector over a long period, I think that it could work.
Mr. Todd: Speaking as someone who was an IT director in the private sector, I, too, endorse that. Such projects are exactly the kind of things for which we should be seeking additional resources.
I conclude by congratulating the hon. and learned Member for Harborough on his speech, and I endorse all that he said about the underfunding of forces across the region. I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond supportively.
10 am
Paul Holmes (Chesterfield) (LD): I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) on securing this important debate. It is not the first on this issue and I doubt whether it will be the last.
For a long period, there was a group of councils known as the F40 group. The councils had historically been underfunded, and the group campaigned for a long time to get the message across to Governments, both previous and present, that they needed to change the funding formula in order to recognise the problems. The east midlands counties were part of that group and took part in the campaign.
The five east midlands counties have been badly hit. They have been badly underfunded for many years, and it has had a cumulative effect that must be tackled. It affects not only the police but fire services and councils. Derbyshire, one of those five counties, has been particularly badly hit over the years. You can imagine the joy, Mr. Bercow, with which those councils and regions heard in 2006 that the Government had accepted their case and that they would rework the formula, because they recognised that some areas were being unfairly underfunded as a result of the workings of the formula.
However, for 2006-07, the financial year that will come to an end in three or four weeks, and 2007-08, the financial year that will start on 1 April, the Government are saying, “This is the money that you should have to deliver your police, fire and council services, but we are not going to give it to you.” The Government tell us what we need in order to deliver the services that they say we must deliver, and they will criticise us if we do not—for instance, in respect of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary baseline assessments—but they are not going to give it to us.
That obviously plunged many people into deep gloom. They thought that they had won the case and that they would be able to improve services, but although there was some increase in funding the brakes were slammed on. For example, the average amount that Derbyshire was not getting from the Government for the police, even though the Government said that it should have it, was about £5.5 million a year.
What are the prospects for the future? We are coming up to the three-year common spending review round for the three years after 2007-08, and we are being told
that, in every field of Government spending, it will be a tight phase. Even the health service has been told that it will receive some increase above inflation, but nothing like what it has received in recent years. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and other Departments have been planning on cuts of between 5 per cent. and 7 per cent. or on funding being below inflation. If, in 2006-08, the first two years of the new formula, the Government are saying, “This is what you should have, but you cannot have it”, what hope is there that things will improve during the three years of the next spending review?
Paddy Tipping (Sherwood) (Lab): The situation is even worse than the hon. Gentleman describes. Although the comprehensive spending review results have yet to be announced, the Home Office has already come to an agreement—a no-growth budget. That highlights the fear expressed by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) that if things do not change we could lose 800 police officers in the east midlands.
In the 31 January debate in the House on the police grant, three Derbyshire MPs—one Labour, one Conservative and one Liberal Democrat, which was me—asked questions on the matter. The Minister effectively said, “Don’t complain. Grin and bear it.” He said that overfunded authorities would lose out if the underfunded ones were given the money that the Government say is needed to deliver the services that they insist are delivered—things that the public rightly expect, such as policing. During that debate the Minister said:
“I ask people to resist the notion that there are winners and losers”.
Three minutes earlier, however, he had said:
“for every loser there are gainers.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2007; Vol. 456, c. 240-41.]
He slightly contradicted himself.
The east midlands police forces, fire services and council services are losers. They have been losers for many years. They thought that the new formula would bring that to an end and were then told that it would not. There are losers for every winner, and the east midlands is a loser. Derbyshire suffers particularly badly in most of those areas—I shall deal with this in detail a little later—and the services are underfunded according to the Government’s criteria.
To add insult to injury, under the HMIC baseline assessments, which the Government use to judge whether a force is good or bad, efficient or inefficient, Derbyshire is judged against forces such as West Mercia, which is at the top of our group. According to the formula, West Mercia gets £10 million more a year than the Government say is needed. Derbyshire gets about £5.5 million less than the Government say is needed. That is a gap of £15 million in police funding. Derbyshire is therefore being judged against a highly funded police authority and is told to grin and bear it and not to complain. That is remarkable.
Derbyshire is the fourth worst funded police authority in England and Wales. As we heard from the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, Derbyshire police receive 78 per cent. of the national average per
head of population. Within the east midlands, all five counties are poorly funded, but if Derbyshire had the same funding as Nottinghamshire, itself an underfunded authority, Derbyshire could put 240 more police on the beat tomorrow. That is comparing two poorly funded authorities, let alone the better funded authorities elsewhere in the country.
Almost weekly, constituents come to me or write to complain about police response times. They have phoned the police, who may have arrived 30 minutes or two days later, or not at all, simply sending a letter with a crime number. I can explain to my constituents why that is. I have been out on patrol with the police a number of times. I have been out with the response cars and with the Transit van at 2 o'clock on a Friday night or Saturday morning when the clubs are turning out. I have been out with the traffic police, I have been out with a beat police officer—although chunks of Chesterfield still do not have beat police officers—and I have been in the control room where civilian controllers take 999 calls. I have seen the stacking system whereby people have to judge which calls are the most urgent, given the limited resources, and which can be stacked at the bottom of the list. Although crimes are involved, some are more serious than others, such as when someone has been injured, a robbery is in progress or a fight is taking place on the street. As to the person whose car has been stolen from outside his house, well, the police might get around to that two days later because they do not have the manpower to respond immediately.
I can explain that situation because of my personal experience, but it is a long process. One can explain it only to so many individuals. I am then asked why Derbyshire police are so understaffed and underfunded. Without adequate funding, Derbyshire police and all police forces in the east midlands—we are all in the same position—cannot turn the words about being tough on crime into reality. We need people on the ground to deliver.
Matters have been made worse because, as we heard earlier, the 280 police community support officers that were promised have been cut to 160. That cheaper version of the policeman still has a considerable effect when patrolling the streets, but we are not even getting that. [Interruption.] The Minister says that it is not a cheaper version. Of course it is. The officers are paid less, are less well trained and do not have the same powers, and if they apprehend a criminal they can hold him only for half an hour until a policeman comes to arrest him.
As I said, many of my constituents say that they often cannot get a policeman to come within two days, let alone 30 minutes. Community support officers have a good and visible effect, as we see on the streets of London. However, they are not fully trained or fully qualified police officers and do not have the same powers. Even then, their number has been cut nearly in half, as we heard in recent Government announcements.
The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said that one east midlands force is using reserves to plug the gap caused by the serious funding shortfall. Derbyshire is in the same position. We heard that, by the end of next year, that force will
have no more reserves to plug the gap; Derbyshire can probably manage another two or three years before it runs out of reserves.
Derbyshire’s chief constable and the chair of the police authority wrote an open letter to Derbyshire MPs on 6 December, in which they said:
“As available resources become exhausted...the constabulary faces serious challenges to maintain existing services...There is a very serious prospect that within three years we will be forced to make substantial cuts in police officer numbers, or PCSOs or possibly even both”.
That authority has been underfunded for 20 or 30 years. It is already the fourth worst funded, and it is looking to make substantial cuts to an already unsatisfactory force. However, despite the constraints of underfunding and understaffing, Derbyshire police authority is judged by the Government to be very effective. Imagine what it could do if it was funded at the national average level, let alone above it.
Derbyshire and east midlands forces, as hon. Members have described, are not led by authorities that complain. Derbyshire is judged to be efficient, and there are five police authorities that work together on certain levels of policing—for example, there is joint work on level two policing. Therefore, the authorities are not simply luddite dinosaurs who say that they do not want to change or work together. They are doing all the right things, but they are chronically underfunded.
I shall finish with a quote. On 22 February the police authority announced a 5 per cent. above-inflation increase in its share of the council tax to try to make up for Government underfunding—it has done so for a number of years in a row now. In the 22 February edition of the local weekly paper, the Derbyshire Times, the chair of the police authority, Janet Birkin, is quoted as saying:
“We would have expected our full grant entitlement—an extra £5.7 million from the Government—but we have been short-changed in order to protect better-off authorities”.
A Home Office spokesman is quoted as saying:
“All police authorities continue to receive their fair share of available resources”.
They do not. In the east midlands, five police authorities do not receive their fair share and have not done so for many years. In 2006, the Government said, “Yes, you are right; you should have more money, but we will not give you your fair share”. That is an inequitable position and I do not see how the Minister can defend it.
10.11 am
Paddy Tipping (Sherwood) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) on initiating this debate and on reminding the Minister of the number of east midland MPs who are here from all three political parties. We are all singing from the same hymn sheet and there are no divisions among us. We are making the same point because we have all been briefed over a long period by our own chief constables and police authority representatives.
Nottinghamshire police force set its budget last week. It was a tough time for the police authority as it had to make hard choices about priorities. The budget
shortfall was £4.5 million, which the authority has met—as other hon. Members have said—in part by using reserves and in part by changing priorities. The real problem is that although police authorities in the east midlands in 2007-08 can manage the situation, in future the scale of the problem will be even greater. Unless there is a change in the budgeting mechanism, there will be real difficulties in the future. In Nottinghamshire, police numbers stand at a record level. The police are backed by new police community support officers, who are funded by the Government. I do not disparage what PCSOs do; they are part of the community and a visible presence on our streets. Indeed, in Nottinghamshire, crime is falling for the fifth consecutive year. We have achieved a lot, but the outlook is challenging.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) and the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) raised the issue of ceilings and floors. I do not complain about funding formulas; there has to be a funding formula. What I complain about is the funding formula not being properly implemented. The floors mean that, in the current year, Nottinghamshire loses out by £5.1 million and the five police authorities in the east midlands lose out by £20.3 million. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield said, that issue was discussed in length during the police grant settlement debate on 31 January 2007. In that debate the Minister said:
“I cannot say today how long the taper on floors and ceilings will remain in place”.
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