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West Yorkshire Police (Funding)

As I was saying in this soap opera before I was so rudely interrupted, the Government have already announced that they expect council tax increases to be below 3 per cent. for 2010-11. The West Yorkshire force must therefore make savings of £10 million to cope with those expected increases and the challenge provided by all the other measures that I have referred to. The Chancellor's pre-Budget report on 9 November 2009 announced that sufficient funding will be made available in the years up to 2012-13 to enable police authorities to maintain the current number of warranted police officers, police community support officers and other staff who exercise police powers. However, no further details were given at that stage, and I would like my hon. Friend the Minister, either today or in due course, to indicate that some clearer guidance will be given to authorities, such as West Yorkshire, to enable them to plan to meet the challenge ahead. Initial forecasts of the anticipated budget shortfalls in 2011-12 and 2012-13 in West Yorkshire, assuming a 1 per cent. pay award, which I suspect will itself be a vexed question, are £16 million and £26 million respectively. Those forecasts also assume the continuation of the specific funding to which I referred earlier. Again, we need far more detail about the funding mechanisms and how those sorts of targets will be reached than we received in the Chancellor's statement, so that effective planning can take place. I want to end my contribution by referring to two revenue-funding avenues that would help to mitigate the major problems that the West Yorkshire force faces—problems that I have outlined—because the Government cannot find overnight the resources required to make up the gap between what West Yorkshire currently receives and what it should receive under the funding formula. One of those avenues is to introduce a statutory power for police authorities and police forces to charge for the full cost of policing commercial events, such as sporting events and music festivals. I cannot see any justification for council tax payers to subsidise profit-making organisations in the way that they do currently. The other avenue relates to revenue raised by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, or POCA. The West Yorkshire force has made significant advances in raising money from POCA. Each division within the force now has a specialist team dealing with POCA and the economic crime unit within the force is also undergoing structural and process changes. Receipts from POCA obviously fluctuate enormously as a result of delays in bringing cases to court and delays in the judicial process itself, and also because of the fact that during the economic downturn assets that are seized, such as houses, have lost a lot of their value. To its credit, the West Yorkshire force has been running a campaign called, "Why should they?", which is an attempt to raise awareness of the use of POCA both internally within the force and among the general public, as a way of encouraging people to report crime or people who are believed to be criminals through Crimestoppers. That campaign has had a great deal of success. The notion of recovering moneys from criminals through POCA is obviously very popular. I understand that a recent Ipsos MORI survey found that, despite relatively little knowledge about the mechanics of POCA among the people surveyed, there was a lot of support for the idea of criminals' assets being seized. In fact, asset seizure was the third most popular option selected, with 86 per cent. of people who responded saying that it was a good idea. It came third only behind the usual demands for a greater police presence on the streets and longer sentences for criminals. However, I must make a point about the incentivisation fund through which POCA operates. It is quite right that those agencies that are at the coal face, such as the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and Her Majesty's Courts Service, and working to make POCA operate effectively should receive the proceeds from POCA. But it is far from clear to me—perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister can enlighten me—why 50 per cent. of the proceeds of POCA should be retained by the Treasury, and it is also unclear exactly who or what that division of the money is supposed to incentivise. There is an overwhelming case, in terms of fairness and providing an incentive, for at least some and ideally all of the money that is retained by the Treasury to be disbursed to the three agencies involved in POCA. Obviously, such a change would benefit all police authorities, including West Yorkshire. That is really the end of my journey through the trials and tribulations of West Yorkshire police funding and how the particular constraints that I referred to will undermine the West Yorkshire force's continuing attempts to address the challenges that are put before it, not only by the Government but by people such as myself and local communities. The West Yorkshire force has made huge progress. It obviously uses its resources extremely well and it deserves a fairer allocation of money through the funding formula. However, if that is not possible—we all know the reasons why that is not instantly possible—then at least the force should be able to enjoy more sympathetic treatment in relation to some of the other problems that I have referred to. I am looking forward to hearing my hon. Friend the Minister's response to those points.