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Police Grant Report

With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to the debate. It has been very interesting, and there have been some common themes—and there has also been occasion to smile, just for the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley). The main common theme is a point I mentioned at the beginning of the debate: every Member who has spoken represents an area whose police force has more officers now than 12 years ago. The local force of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) in Cambridgeshire, for instance, has 109 more officers than 13 years ago. The police forces covering the constituencies of every Member who has spoken today also have more resources than in 1997 in real terms, including, dare I say it, my own force in north Wales, which has £45 million more than in 1997 in real terms. Every force of every Member who has spoken today has lower crime rates than in 1997, too. Overall, the rate is 36 per cent. lower than in 1997. Therefore, whatever points Members have made in this debate, the background to it is that we are still working from a very strong base in terms of the resources, crime figures and police numbers in their constituencies. Under the police settlement for 2010-11, next year there will be about £259 million more for policing across England and Wales than this year. That means that every force of every Member who has spoken in the debate will get a minimum increase of 2.5 per cent. The average increase across the board will be 2.7 per cent., with a high of 3.5 per cent. in the case of Avon and Somerset. That is extra resources at a time of recession with a commitment from Government to meet those resources, and along with that there is falling crime, higher police numbers and more resources in general. I accept that there are some issues, however. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley), my right hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) and for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), and the hon. Members for Woking (Mr. Malins), for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) and for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) all said that they have concerns about the funding formula. I can also, at last, smile sweetly at the hon. Member for Northampton, South, because he has raised that issue in a way that can only charm me into responding to him in a positive way. I must tell all those Members that we keep the funding formula under review. I recognise that, as the hon. Members for Woking and for Peterborough mentioned said, there are pressures from population factors, tourism and a range of other issues; in Wales—in my part of the world—Cardiff city council and the South Wales police force are raising issues relating to sporting events. We are undertaking a review of the funding formula. It was started in September 2008 and is due to conclude shortly. I would like to announce a public consultation period over the summer of 2010, after—I hope—I have been re-elected to this office in the general election. The points that colleagues have made should be passed on to me and my officials, because we need to examine the issues as part of the public consultation. We have given a commitment to examine the funding formula for the next comprehensive spending review. We did not want to carry out that examination in the middle of the current three-year cycle, because there will be winners and losers in any potential change. There is a genuine wish—the hon. Member for Northampton, South can take this back to his constituency this weekend—to say that there will be a review and a consultation, that an assessment of the factors mentioned in this debate will be made and that there will be a revised funding formula, in one shape or another, for the next comprehensive spending review. As hon. Members will know, we have removed the ceilings—floors still exist and we intend to remove those. The time frame has not yet been determined, but we will seek to remove them when we can. We need to ensure financial stability.