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Police Grant

I am delighted that the chief constable is writing to the Minister and I think that I know enough about the Minister to know that he will listen and take representations seriously. I urge him to focus on the Surrey example because there are other police forces—I shall not name them—which may not deliver as well as they could. If the criticism that there was not enough money were coming from them, one might be somewhat sceptical of their requests for more money, but I cite Surrey because it has done so well with efficiency savings and performance. I shall not labour that point any further, as my hon. Friend and I have both flagged up the Surrey example. We accept that the distribution of the grant and the implementation of the funding formula are, as the Minister rightly observed, work in progress. The way that settlements will operate this year, with the floor and ceilings, means that 18 forces will receive the minimum increase of 2.5 per cent.—average 2.7 per cent.—but only one will receive the maximum of 4 per cent. That is only one of the 43 forces. The joint Association of Police Authorities and Association of Chief Police Officers expenditure forecasting group, in a submission to the 2007 CSR, said that there would be a substantial funding gap at that level of grant increase—this year's amount—and for the two subsequent years. On the group's most optimistic assumptions, the funding gap by the end of the CSR period—2010-11—would be in the region of £660 million. Using slightly less optimistic assumptions, the group calculates that the gap would be £996 million—just shy of £1 billion. It is worth noting that both sets of calculations by that authoritative group assume that police authorities will increase the police precept on council tax up to the maximum of 5 per cent. a year, although of course some of them might not want to go that far.