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Police Grant Report

I wish I could tell the Minister that my remarks will be sizeably different in any way from many of those who have spoken before, but they will be similar—except that I shall talk about the needs of Northamptonshire whereas other Members spoke of the needs of their counties. What strikes me, however, is the degree of cross-party unanimity on the need to reform the formula. We heard a wonderful display of proper contribution to debate from my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who is no longer in his place, about the total lack of ability to understand formula funding and its detail. I hope that the Minister will be able to promise us a total review of funding to ensure that when the new funding formula is introduced, it will be understandable at least to those who have to read these documents and try to make sense of them, but who, as my hon. Friend said, so far fail to do so on every occasion. I do not want to test the Minister on his knowledge of understanding of the formula. [Hon. Members: "Go on."] It would be cruel to do so. There is a real need, however, to create a greater understanding for all of us. There is also a real need to create fairer formulae. I know that my own county constabulary—as I shall explain in a little more detail later, it has missed out badly as a result of formula funding and experienced considerable difficulties with financing—has worked tremendously hard and wants to communicate that fact to the people it serves. A police survey is currently under way, which simply asks, "I would be prepared to pay more council tax for a higher level of service. Yes or No?" I do not know what the result will be, but it shows that there is real concern about police funding. I know that my county constabulary is most concerned about formula funding. I welcomed the remarks of the former police Minister, the right hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), who is no longer in his place. He spoke thoughtfully on the basis of his long experience, but he made the same point that I am making to the Minister at this very moment—the formulae used for funding are so open to total incomprehension that they must be reformed. That from an ex-Minister. I know that the present Minister has a number of very clever civil servants supporting him—they are sitting in this Chamber at this moment—and I hope that they will understand the depth of feeling among us on this issue, because we need everybody to get behind this. If we manage to make the changes we want, it is they who will have to do the work, and I wish them very well. I have had a number of discussions with my own constabulary, the last this morning, about the particular issues affecting it. The damping arrangements are a particular problem. Damping is supposed to subsidise forces with the least relative need by taking grants from those forces with the greatest relative need in order to ensure that they receive a minimum year-on-year increase rather than a cut. That is my basic understanding of damping as a formula. Tragically, damping is not working—certainly not in Northamptonshire. My police authority and county constabulary believe that they suffer from a particularly unfair example of formula funding. Northamptonshire police estimate that they will lose £853,000 of formula grant next year as a result of damping. Indeed, they tell me that they have lost £1,844,000 of formula grant over the last three years because of this particular process. As the Minister will know, that is a great deal of money to Northamptonshire police. In fact, it equates to 20 extra officers in the county each year. I have already observed that the east midlands region seems to be particularly damaged by this element of formula funding. It is estimated that over the last three years the region has lost £60 million of formula grant that it believes should have come its way. As I pointed out in an intervention, that equates to an additional 600 officers each year. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) make the same point earlier. Northamptonshire county constabulary are particularly bewildered by the results of damping as it affects Northumbria police, who are the biggest gainers in this respect. They receive £36 million of subsidy per annum, which allows the local authority to freeze the council tax. How my own police authority would like to be in the same position, but it is not. It is especially unfair that, owing to the cumulative effect of damping over a number of years, Northamptonshire police are consistently being denied the level of grant that they require according to the needs formula itself. That seems to me like Alice in Wonderland. If there was ever a need for change, this is it. I should like someone to look in the mirror, decide that change is needed, and tell us that it is going to happen. I hope that the Minister, who has been fair and courteous throughout the debate, will be able to promise to review the formula funding process.