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Police Grant Report

This is a welcome opportunity to debate the police grant settlement, which forms about half of the police's funding, the rest coming from the local government finance system—a combination of revenue support, non-domestic rates and council tax. There cannot be many MPs who are entirely happy with the Government's handling of the police pay settlement last year—we all received a sizeable postbag on the matter—because the Government clearly got it wrong, and Ministers probably regret the way in which they handled it at the time. The pay settlement has left a legacy of bitterness. I can still go into my local police station in Reading and see the posters on the wall that say ““Tough on crime, tough on the fighters of crime””. I know that the Government have since tried to address the pay settlement, but the bitterness will remain for some time. What happened has been neither forgotten nor forgiven. I am delighted to have this opportunity to pay tribute to my local police force, the Thames Valley police, for its continuing hard work and good performance. This year's unremarkable police settlement reflects the overall spending review provision from the Home Office—that is, no real-terms increase. This translates into a 2.7 per cent. increase in the general police grant for 2009-10. It is true that Thames Valley police is quite fortunate, because it is one of the police authorities to receive a higher police grant allocation, compared with other shire authorities. It will receive £238 million this year, which equates to a 2.7 per cent. increase on last year's settlement. That is not one of the highest settlements, but, fortunately, it is not one of the lowest either. I am grateful to the Home Secretary, who recognises the importance and the position of the Thames Valley force, because of its close proximity to London, and has allocated funds accordingly. Despite that, however, there are certain issues that it will be useful for me to put on record today. I have mentioned before that the Thames Valley police force suffers from considerable problems of officer retention. A major concern is that the Metropolitan police is able to pay its officers much more than Thames Valley police can pay its equivalent officers. The Met is also able to give its officers free travel within a 70-mile zone right around London. The south-east allowance, which was introduced a few years ago in an effort to curb a further manpower drain, has remained frozen, while the Metropolitan police's London weighting allowance has continued to rise. The incentive gap has therefore become wider, and it has become much more attractive for Thames Valley officers to move to London to improve their economic position. This is now causing a serious problem for the Thames Valley force. Its chief constable, Sara Thornton, giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee when it happened to be meeting in my constituency, said that she would be in favour of increasing the south-east allowance by £1,000 a year to make it easier for officers living in the south-east not to get sucked in by the extra pay and free travel that they would get for working in London. I believe that the chief constable has since met—and continues to have an important dialogue with—the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing, with the intention of introducing the flexibility further to increase the south-east allowance. In a debate in Westminster Hall last week, it became clear that Thames Valley police had the money in its budgets to fund that allowance and to make it available. During the debate, I think that the Minister said that an uplift in the allowance in the south-east would cost about £20 million, and that he referred to a figure of about £2 million to achieve the uplift in the Thames Valley police area. I hope that he will correct me if I am wrong.