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Police Grant Report

It is important for us to take the police, and police finance, extremely seriously. I do not think that that has happened of late, certainly on the Opposition Benches. I said two years ago—the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) quoted me without mentioning me—that I believed that the time had come for a proper and substantial review of the way in which we funded our police. If we are serious about localism—which I do not think many Members are, on either side of the House—we have, in the funding of the police, the perfect model of what might be called transactional politics. Even as Police Minister I opposed the capping of police authorities—not local government—and I still do, because it offends against the localism to which I have referred. We saw that in London for the four years during which Ken Livingstone said, very clearly, "I will put x per cent. on your per cent. precept, and this is what you will get for it in the end. You will get a team of six—one sergeant, two constables and three police community support officers—in every ward in London." I shall say more about London later. People bought that, and it was delivered. We thought that it was sacrosanct. I shall say more about that as well. I take on board what the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds said about the formula, and I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Minister has done in that regard, but in my opinion it is time for a fundamental rethink—locally based—of the funding of police forces. As I think I said from the Dispatch Box when I was a Minister, it cannot be right for the amount offered locally to the overall resource base of police forces to range from—I hope the House will forgive me for using old figures—some 18 per cent. in Northumbria to well over 55 per cent. in Surrey when the two areas are providing essentially the same service. It cannot be right that the precept at that time—again, I hope the House will forgive me for not using up-to-date figures—ranged from about £80 to the best part of £250 or £260 per head, or even more. Of course policing in Surrey is different from policing in Northumbria—if it were not, there would be a national police force—but such local vagaries should not obstruct the provision of a more universal and fairer system that is much more locally based in terms of contribution. I mean that in an entirely non-partisan sense.