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Police Grant

As usual, my right hon. and learned Friend makes an elegant and trenchant point and I hope that the Minister will be able to answer the conundrum he poses—perhaps by straying into the area of how capping will operate. I know that one or two authorities want to bust the 5 per cent. limit. To meet my right hon. and learned Friend's point, what will happen about the need to observe the statutory duty? I am sure that the Minister will want to answer that point. As we all agree, greater efficiency is vital if better policing is to be delivered, but I want to explore the question of the doubling of the annual cashable efficiency savings from 1.5 per cent. to about 3 per cent. That is how we arrive at the figure of just over 9 per cent. cashable savings over the CSR period. Since the current efficiency targets were introduced in 1999 the police service has made a lot of progress in meeting them. It has taken up the challenge. Over the period 1999 to 2005, for instance, when the annual efficiency target was about 2 per cent., police authorities achieved average efficiency savings of about 2.7 per cent a year, but the point about jacking up the cashable savings to 9 per cent. over three years is that much of the easy, low-hanging fruit has already been plucked; the opportunities for cashing heroic efficiency savings of 3 per cent. or more each year diminish over time. It is also the case, as has been pointed out to me many times by people who come to see me, that the efficiency savings in earlier years were often re-allocated to improve front-line services, but that is likely to be less easy with future efficiency savings, which will have to fund the base, because policing demands are growing at a fair old rate. Everyone agrees that they are growing by more than 2.7 per cent. a year. If those tight targets are to be met on the efficiency side, will the Minister share with us what he thinks some of the consequences may be? The first will be of immediate interest to every member of the public listening to the debate—I am sure they are watching in droves: does the Minister accept that there are likely to be fewer officers on our streets as a result of this year's settlement? The chairman of Cheshire police authority has warned that officers will be pulled off the streets to perform administrative duties unless more funding is found. He set out that case in December 2007, in Jane's Police Review. More recently—last week, in fact—the latest police strength figures came out from the Government, and they show a decline in the number of officers from 140,038 in September 2006 to 139,710 in September 2007. I ask the Minister a simple question: does he believe that that trend will continue, as a result of the settlement? The question relating to police on the streets is, to many people, a simplistic one, but it is the one that most of our constituents ask. Last year and this year, the Minister acknowledged how the national formula was working in a slow and evolutionary way. However, last year more than this year, he acknowledged that its operation was palpably unfair to certain parts of the country. I should like to give an example relating to the east midlands police authorities—Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire—whose representatives came to visit me to raise some of their specific concerns about what they consider to be a growing funding gap. Following the settlement, their funding gap amounts to about £47 million, and like the ACPO and APA estimates that I referred to earlier, they assume a precept increase of the full 5 per cent. If the precept were to increase by less than that—for example, by 4 per cent.—they calculate that that would increase the funding gap to more than £60 million, up from £47 million, over the CSR years. It has been pointed out to me—I am sure that this argument could be adduced for other parts of the country—that the east midlands region is one of the two fastest growing regions nationally, with its population growing by 0.8 per cent. per annum and changing population demographics, including, but not limited to, the increase in migrant workers from EU states, which is greatly adding to the complexity of policing there. In respect of my own neck of the woods in the eastern region, the chief constable of Cambridgeshire made some important points along those lines—as, indeed, has the chief constable of Kent, Mike Fuller. They have made representations about the grant allocation to the effect that perhaps not the most up-to-date population data are being used and that, as a result, they are not receiving the appropriate funding. It would take the Minister too long to deal with every police authority, but I wonder what his view is of the east midlands case. The settlement must also address some issues that cause concern, particularly when we hear them from those on the front line—we are not talking about think-tanks or one-off examples from constituents. I should like to know how the Minister thinks that this year's settlement will address the point made by the Police Federation, which last November issued a study on the number of detectives in this country and calculated that there were about 2,000 vacant detective posts. That is particularly important at a time when, as I said in my earlier remarks, violent crime has doubled in the past 10 years, knife crime has doubled in the past two years, gun crime has doubled in the past four years and there are unhappy data on robberies and murders. There are fewer detectives to deal with those crimes. I wonder whether the Minister can give us an assessment of the recruitment and retention problems that force some officers to rely on trainees and unqualified officers in criminal intelligence departments. There are reports that inexperienced officers are investigating for the first time serious offences, such as stranger rapes, with little or no supervision and that the remaining detectives have to carry huge case loads and continue investigations, while still being expected to respond to the next major incident. Of course, target-driven detection is still occurring, with targets being met by reclassifying offences or encouraging the public to drop complaints—something that officers simply do not want to do, but that is what the Police Federation tells us. In previous debates on this subject, the issue of police community support officers has been raised. The Minister and I agree that PCSOs are important to the proper implementation of neighbourhood policing, a policy that we support, but the number of PCSOs promised in 2005—24,000—has been reduced to 16,000 nationally. In 2005-06, £91 million was provided to help with the recruitment of PCSOs. It would be useful to know what he thinks the effect of the settlement will be on PCSO funding, and what he anticipates it will do to the number of PCSOs in the next year. We stress that PCSOs play an important role in making neighbourhood policing work, and it would be useful to know the resource implications for them. In relation to the police precept, we know that in 1997, some 85 per cent. of police forces' gross revenue was financed through central Government. In 2006-07, the latest year for which we have figures, the proportion was expected to fall to 60 per cent. The amount of police spending financed through the council tax precept has doubled in real terms between 2001 and 2006-07; in short, council tax now accounts through the precept for one fifth of police force expenditure, compared with one eighth in 2001. Ministers have claimed over the years to be almost personally responsible for the growth since 1996 in the number of additional officers, but as we face higher precepts next year, now is probably the time for the Government to give credit to council tax payers across this country, who have certainly done their part to fund extra recruitment. I have a question about the police precept for the Minister; it bears on a policy on which I think he and I agree. In order to deliver efficiencies, which will be needed if the current settlement is to be implemented in a sensible fashion, some forces want to embark on voluntary merger, including two forces in East Anglia that I know have been in touch with him as well as with me. They say that they simply cannot go ahead with the voluntary merger that will deliver efficiencies without precept equalisation or reconsideration of the precept regime. Can he tell us anything about precept equalisation that might give encouragement for the next three years to those forces that want to merge voluntarily? That is at the heart of the efficiencies that he and I both seek. This debate could not pass without some reference to police pay, not least because the police authorities, which are obviously the main customers concerned in today's announcement, were somewhat foxed by the Home Secretary's decision, in a departure from the arbitration ruling, not to give the 2.5 per cent. but to stage the award so that it will be 1.9 per cent. this year. It has an impact on how police authorities plan in-year for delivery of police services. The APA has pointed out on many occasions its extreme disappointment that the Home Secretary did not implement the 2.5 per cent. award. It says:"““Most police authorities had already got this money in their budgets, and the Home Secretary has prevented us from paying it. The decision does not help the financial position going forward since, as indicated above, the full 2.5 per cent. will be in base budgets for next year. The APA believe that the Home Secretary's decision is ill-advised…creating unnecessary industrial strife and jeopardises future work on modernising the police work force.””" It would be useful if the Minister could remind us of the argument for not paying the 2.5 per cent. when the police authorities had already budgeted for it.