PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Police Community Support Officers - 17 January 2022 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

The decisions on how to use funding and resources are operational matters for chief constables, working with their democratically elected police and crime commissioners. They are best placed to make these decisions within their communities, based on their knowledge and experience, including decisions about the right balance of their workforce.

Our Conservative police and crime commissioner was elected on a platform to fix the unfair funding formula for Bedfordshire police, but his solution to raise much-needed funding to put more police on our streets is to raise local council tax. With two large towns and an international airport, Bedfordshire police should not be funded as a rural force. Will the Minister give our force the resources it needs before expecting my constituents to pay more?

Obviously the Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner is doing a fantastic job. He won a resounding victory in the recent election, and I know he continues to enjoy significant support in that county. As I hope the hon. Gentleman has heard me say in the past, we are committed to coming up with a new funding formula for policing. The formula we use at the moment is a little bit elderly and creaky. He will be pleased to hear that I had a meeting just this morning with the chair of the new technical body that is putting that work together. We hope to be able to run the formula before the next election.

The Minister has brushed off criticisms from the Labour Benches, but is he aware of the disquiet on his own Benches? Only last week, Conservative MPs lined up in Westminster Hall to describe a broken system that is

“stacked in favour of the perpetrators rather than the victims.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 258WH.]

One said:

“Across the UK there are people afraid to leave their homes after dark, scared to go to the shops…That cannot go on…The police quite simply do not have the powers or resources.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 257-8WH.]

We agree. That is why neighbourhood policing is at the heart of our new proposals. We will put a police hub in every new community, create neighbourhood prevention teams and fund a next generation of neighbourhood watch. I wonder whether the Minister has anything new to say to his own disaffected Back Benchers, or is crime simply not “red meat” enough for the “big dog”?

Hilarious. I understand the hon. Lady is playing catch-up on policing, and she may have missed the 11,000 police officers we have recruited so far. She may have missed the significant falls in knife crime, acquisitive crime and all neighbourhood-type crimes, as we have seen recently. Policing and fighting crime are a challenge, as I know more than most. It is always two steps forward, one step back. It is right that hon. Members on all sides should be anxious and concerned about crime in their constituencies, but that is why we are recruiting 20,000 police officers, why the Prime Minister has made crime a priority and why he wants to roll up county lines and deal with youth violence. This is a fight that we can win, but over time. While we are having some success as it stands, there is always much more to do.