Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Mark Tami.)

Before I get on to the main substance of the debate, this is a fitting opportunity to pay tribute to a police officer, Sandy Padgett, who died only last month. She was a thoughtful, intelligent police officer who was the senior officer responsible for the half of Somerset within which my Constituency lies, covering Taunton Deane, Sedgemoor and west Somerset. She died very unexpectedly at the tragically young age of 41, and her loss is still mourned and noticed not just by police officers but by people in all walks of life in my constituency and across Somerset.

The context of the debate is a decision by the Conservative-controlled executive at Somerset county council to reduce the budget for police community support officers, with effect from April 2010, by £129,000. Before I get into the details of precisely what arrangements are planned and why I feel so strongly that we should resist the budget cuts, I shall paint a background picture of why this is a matter of wider concern for people living right across Somerset.

Like people everywhere else in the country, my constituents are affected by violent serious crime, but it is fair to say that that is not the typical everyday experience of most people in most communities in Somerset. What causes a great deal of anxiety for those people is more routine-some people would describe it as lower-level-crime and antisocial behaviour, which often blights their lives. It is things such as graffiti, litter and late-night noise that make people feel that their quality of life is compromised. That public concern is real, and it is the responsibility of all interested parties-political parties, the police, local councils and others-to address the anxieties that my constituents and those of other Somerset Members feel.

Various councils and interest groups have put in place good arrangements to try to address those anxieties about lower-level crime and antisocial behaviour. Even before I was elected there was a good scheme of wardens in a large village in my constituency called Bishops Lydeard. They had a distinctive uniform and were visible out on patrol in their community. Similar schemes operated throughout Somerset and throughout the country, a lot of them under the auspices of local authorities rather than the police. The decision was taken, on balance rightly, to bring all those disparate groups and different efforts to address public concern under one umbrella and make them part of the overall police family. That was the genesis of the idea of PCSOs.

Last Friday I spent, as I have many times in the past, a half day out on patrol with the police in certain areas of Taunton-Holway, Halcon, the Lane estate, Priorswood and Lyngford. In all those areas, I was particularly interested to observe how well police neighbourhood teams are working in their communities. They have been a success in many parts of the country.

People often say to me, "Well, I'm not sure about community support officers, because I'd like to see more real fully-fledged police". Everyone would recognise-it is a statement of fact-that there are more police officers than there were 10 years ago, and I do not want PCSOs to replace the regular police officers or be a substitute for them. However, they can play a complementary role as part of neighbourhood teams. That is what I have observed in Taunton and elsewhere: police have worked closely in conjunction with PCSOs and the different roles have made them a more effective and responsive force as a consequence.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. As a former chairman of the Avon and Somerset police authority, I am delighted that we have had more police officers in Avon and Somerset recently, although I must say that that is now in decline: we are losing officers, and have fewer now than we had a year or two ago. However, PCSOs are playing an essential role in supporting our police officers. They not only provide a uniform presence in many of our villages, but in towns such as Frome, they form a very strong bond with local young people, and work in a way that is simply not possible with modern policing. PCSOs nevertheless provide a complementary service, exactly as my hon. Friend says.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Perhaps I can break down the role of PCSOs as part of the neighbourhood teams into three categories. The first role is visibility. How many times have we heard-not only in towns, but in small villages and more remote populated areas-how much people value having a visible police presence on the street? People often complain that they do not see the police, or that the police do not properly engage with them, so the uniformed presence of PCSOs is valued by a great number of people.

Secondly, PCSOs can play a role in ensuring that the function of the police reaches down to community level-for example, by holding regular advice surgeries in community centres, or by visiting victims of crime or people who have made complaints about the level of police activity in their area and talking to them about their concerns. They might go and see older people and advise them about home security, or visit primary or secondary schools to talk to children about crime and police-related matters.

Outside the Asda store in Taunton there is what is called a police pod. The public can drop in to that and do not have to go to the length of visiting the main police station. There they can get some advice on security-making their house, car or bike safer-or report a crime to the police or the PCSOs. In all those different ways, PCSOs, precisely because they are not engaged in dealing with criminals in the same way as police officers are, can spend more of their time out on the street, in the community, visible, at the same time as having those regular community functions.

The third role of PCSOs is something that often surprises people, because it sounds slightly counter-intuitive. Quite a lot of police time is spent on activity that is not to do with combating criminal activity. For example, the police might be asked to help divert traffic following a road accident, but PCSOs are perfectly capable of performing that task, ensuring that more regular police officers are not taken away from other tasks. Somerset MPs know that at this time of year carnivals are very popular, and PCSOs have a role in ensuring that public safety is maintained when thousands of people come on to the streets to enjoy such community events.

I remember once going on patrol with the Taunton town centre PCSOs. A child was lost, having turned round to find its parents gone during a shopping trip. Understandably, the parents were panicking. PCSOs, through their radio links and co-ordination with the CCTV operators, were able to locate the child and reunite child and parents. No criminal act had been committed. Some people would want the police out and about catching criminals, not performing that type of function, and PCSOs are ideally suited to such work.

To summarise, people value the visibility of PCSOs and like them as part of a neighbourhood team with the regular police; and the police can have greater flexibility and perform more of a community role as a result of PCSOs working in concert with them. But because of the historic funding legacy-the PCSOs were brought in under the police umbrella but were not originally part of the police family-it has been recognised for some time that councils and others contribute to their funding. An agreement was made in 2008 between Somerset county council, Sedgemoor district council and Taunton Deane borough council to make a contribution to the funding of PCSOs in partnership with Avon and Somerset police. Sedgemoor and Taunton Deane have much smaller budgets so their contributions were relatively modest, at between £20,000 and £30,000 annually. However, Somerset county council agreed an annual contribution of £418,000, a substantial sum. Between them, the councils were funding an additional 17 PCSOs to work with local communities across Somerset.

At the time of the agreement, the spokesperson for Somerset county council said:

"These three Councils have funded PCSO's because they recognise the improvements to community safety which can be achieved by PCSO's working at a local level."

That is precisely the type of activity that I have mentioned, and the council cited others, including making our communities feel safer and reducing antisocial behaviour; reducing crime; limiting the damage caused by alcohol to our communities; preventing young people from entering the criminal justice system; safeguarding vulnerable people; and improving safety on Somerset roads. So the undertaking was given by Somerset county council and others to maintain funding to achieve those objectives.

It is in that context that I was genuinely shocked to discover that the new administration at Somerset county council had decided to make a cut of £129,000 in the budget for PCSOs from April 2010. That is a cut in the existing budget contribution of almost a third.-

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He will know that the Conservatives in Somerset have been alleging that the plan to reduce PCSOs is only a plan, but is he aware that papers that went to the council's Cabinet this week talk of the reduction in PCSO support essentially as a done deal, and already take it into account in plans for the future? Is that not a concern?

It is very much a concern for me. I would not want anyone to think that this claim had been invented by me or other Liberal Democrats. As my hon. Friend rightly says, it is a concrete plan put forward by the Conservative administration of Somerset county council. Further confirmation is provided by the fact that, in an expensive local newspaper advertisement, the prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for Taunton Deane said that he supported me in opposing the cuts being proposed by the Conservatives on Somerset county council. That appears to offer complete confirmation that those cuts are in no way fictitious. If they were, he would not need to support my campaign against his colleagues at county hall.

We had county council elections in June this year, so they were only a matter of months ago. People might have been entitled to expect that if there was a plan to cut the county council contribution to this important police community support work by almost a third, it would have been one of the issues that we discussed, in a grown-up and sensible way, at that election. The Conservatives could have said, "Here's our plan to slash the budget for PCSOs," and we could have had a debate about whether that was a good plan. The Conservatives clearly thought that people in Somerset would not be keen on the idea, which is why it was kept secret during the election campaign.

There has been no meaningful consultation. I do not know whether my hon. Friends the Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) have also received letters from Somerset county council asking for their views on whether that would be an appropriate course of action in the communities that they represent in Parliament. However, I am not aware of any meaningful consultation taking place.

Public opinion, in my view, is strongly against the proposal. I would not claim, of course, that there is 100 per cent. Opposition to what has been suggested by the county council. However, I decided to try a modern form of communication and set up a Facebook group to try to oppose the changes. Almost 1,000 people have signed up to the group in the past few days alone, and a few of them have posted comments. Let me give hon. Members a flavour of them. Phil Hobson said:

"Our PCSOs do a great job collecting 'on the street' intelligence for the police and can talk to young people better than regular officers. I know this from personal experience-we always see them walking the beat and they have defused several...incidents"- that is, antisocial behaviour incidents-

"as well. Wouldn't know what to do without them."

Danni Sowden wrote:

"our PCSO is very good, helps our village become a nice area and stops trouble!"

Angie Leach said:

"Well done and good luck. The PCSOs here have proven their value to the community over and over again!"

Helen Gould said:

"To cut back on PCSO funding now would be a very unhelpful step back in the fight to provide safer, quieter communities for us all to live in. It would undermine and undo all the good work these hard-working and conscientious minded individuals have achieved."

Tony Gore said:

"Nothing beats 'presence' as a deterrent, and in country areas any form of policing is better than none."

Andy Newland said:

"I am a fan of PCSOs on balance they have been good for our communities".

That is the type of feedback that I have been getting from people who are extremely concerned about the budget cuts proposed by the county council.

I understand that all local authorities, and indeed central Government, face difficult budgetary issues. We are in a situation in which decisions will have to be made, and sometimes those decisions will not be popular. However, we must remember that the county council has just spent almost £50,000 on advertising to recruit a new chief executive. That, for me, represents an extraordinary priority, given that the budget for PCSOs is being cut. If the Conservatives in the council had decided that they would rather have a lower budget, they would, as I said, have been well-advised to put that proposal forward at the elections a few months ago.

In conclusion, my desire is to support the neighbourhood policing teams. They work extremely well and ensure that the police continue to have a high level of visibility in communities across Somerset. Those teams of regular police officers and PCSOs work in concert. It is my view-I hope that it is the Minister's as well-that a cut of £129,000 in the annual Somerset county council contribution to Avon and Somerset police to fund PCSOs would be a backward step. It would make the public's understandable concerns about crime in Somerset all the more acute. I look forward to hearing his comments, therefore, and I hope that he will join me and say how strongly committed he is to neighbourhood policing. I hope, too, that he will give a clear steer that this House is uneasy about the cuts proposed by the Conservative administration at Somerset county council.

I am grateful to Mr. Browne for securing this debate, and I congratulate him on it. I am also grateful to his hon. Friends the hon. Members for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for supporting him this evening. I also thank the hon. Member for Taunton for his kind comments about our police colleague, Sandy Padgett, who, as he mentioned, died recently. His comments will be of comfort to those who knew her and her work in the Somerset area.

I know that the hon. Member for Taunton has taken a keen interest in the matter before us, and I have been following the press discussions with interest. He made an excellent case for the work of community support officers not just in Somerset but throughout England and Wales, and for the support that they give to police officers in dealing with antisocial behaviour, community policing and ground-level activities that are crucial to confidence in police services throughout Somerset and elsewhere.

The amount of funding that Somerset county council gives to support Avon and Somerset police on such matters is-I hope the hon. Gentleman will recognise-a matter for Somerset county council. I cannot be, nor would I wish to be, the leader or the executive of Somerset county council; nor can I account for the administration that currently runs it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the support given to PCSOs in Somerset remains a matter for local discretion. Later I will give some views and flavours about those decisions, but they remain a local matter.

The key point that has been put across today is that PCSOs have a vital role to play in neighbourhood policing. If I look, as I did only an hour ago, at the figures for the west Somerset basic command unit, which covers the hon. Gentleman's Constituency, I see that there are clear advantages in driving down crime to be gained from police and police community support officers working together. Indeed, crime in the area that the hon. Gentleman represents has fallen by 6.2 per cent. over the past year, with vehicle crime falling by 22.4 per cent. If I may make a plug, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I got those figures from the crime map that we launched a couple of weeks ago which shows the position in every area and BCU area.

As part of the policing pledge, we want such engagement with the community. The hon. Gentleman made a strong case for the synergy between PCSOs and neighbourhood policing in driving down crime and increasing confidence. Indeed, confidence in policing has increased, and not just in Somerset but across England and Wales, from 45 per cent. a year ago to a record 50 per cent. in the last British crime survey two weeks ago, our target being 60 per cent. in the near future.

That will have something to do with the record numbers of police officers in Somerset and elsewhere-Somerset now has 3,303 formal police officers, which is 314 more than in 1997-but it will also have a great deal to do with the focus of PCSOs, working alongside police officers, on tackling lower-level, but highly visible antisocial behaviour and other issues of high concern for the community at large. One of the main themes of the policing white paper that we will bring forward shortly will be strengthening and embedding that role further, because it is only through effective partnership work between the police and police community support officers, working alongside councils such as Somerset and Taunton Deane, that we can make a difference on the ground.

Funding is a key issue, but let me give some context. The Home Office is providing some £332 million to police authorities in the current financial year to support neighbourhood policing. That constitutes 70 per cent. of the funding for some 16,000 police community support officers nationwide. The Home Office now provides some £7.16 million of support for Avon and Somerset constabulary to ensure provision of 346 PCSOs, who are funded this year by that direct grant from this Labour Government. There are 381 PCSOs in Avon and Somerset constabulary overall. The difference between those figures-346 and 381-is because of funding such as that provided by Somerset county council and other agencies. Home Office funding increased last year by 2.7 per cent. and by a similar amount this year. In 2010-11, for the last year of this comprehensive spending review, we are committing to ensuring that that central Government support to fund the large bulk of PCSOs is in place for the future.

Whatever the decisions of Avon and Somerset police authority or Somerset county council, this Government have a commitment to continue supporting PCSOs. The 346 PCSOs funded directly by this Government were funded last year, will be funded this year and will be funded next year, pending the CSR, which will take place after the General Election whatever the outcome. That funding for neighbourhood policing is a central part of our partnership approach.

For me personally, match funding and community buy-in to PCSOs are extremely important. That is why I have welcomed past commitments made by local authorities in the Avon and Somerset area to supporting those additional community support officers. I think that they represent very good value for money given the activities that they can undertake to prevent crime, build confidence, support communities and help to reduce crime on the ground. Partnership in policing is extremely important. If it does not exist, and if crime rises, local authorities such as those in Somerset will have to suffer the consequences, including more social dysfunction and difficulties on the streets. Those issues would affect the future budget headings of places such as Somerset.

The 11 neighbourhood police beat teams that operate in the Taunton constituency, and the PCSOs who support them, are extremely valuable in helping to drive down crime and, ultimately, reduce the burden on ratepayers as a consequence of that crime downstream.

Against that background, I share the hon. Gentleman's concern that Somerset county council is considering a reduction of some £129,000 in it funding for PCSOs from 1 April 2010. Like him, I have seen the newspapers and heard what colleagues representing other parts of Somerset have said about the fact that this is still a plan in progress. That is a matter for the council, as I have said. I was interested in what the hon. Member for Yeovil said about the Cabinet papers, but I have to say that this is a decision for the council. I would, however, be disappointed-as would Avon and Somerset police-if that cut took place.

A point has just occurred to me, and I wonder whether the Minister can help me with it. If, as a result of this quite disgraceful decision by Somerset county council, PCSOs were laid off and made redundant, would the cost of those redundancies fall on the police authority? Would not that reduce yet further our ability to police Somerset properly?

My understanding is that it would, because those PCSOs would be employed by the police authority rather than the county council. I will check on that, however, and if need be, confirm it or otherwise after the debate.

I want to put this matter into context, because it is a serious issue relating to Somerset county council's contribution. I would be disappointed if it were to reduce that contribution. I know that the police authority would also be disappointed. I need to put this into context, however, because the £129,000 would equate to about 4.5 PCSOs from the present Avon and Somerset contingent of 381-346 of whom are funded centrally by the Home Office. So, while this is an important issue, I would not wish people in Avon and Somerset to think that the decision would lead to the loss of PCSOs on the ground in Somerset, or indeed in Taunton. The Home Office is committed to that funding and will continue that funding. We will ensure, as we have done to date, that the 346 are in place for the future.

The Avon and Somerset force faces considerable challenges to meet its joint police and local authority public confidence target, which is currently at 46 per cent., rising to a final target of nearly 60 per cent. by March 2012. The PCSOs will be a considerable factor in achieving that, and they will have a particular role to play in that regard. Any reduction in their numbers, outside the Home Office contribution, would be regretted, but I have to emphasise again that that is a matter for Somerset county council, and I hope that it will take on board what has been said in the House this evening.

I know that the hon. Member for Taunton has collected a number of signatures to his petition, and I am extremely impressed by his use of Facebook. My constituents try to impress on me the importance of this modern technology, and I hope that, at some point, I shall reform and be able to respond in detail. It shows that there is a strong level of support for these issues in Taunton and in the rest of Somerset, and I will undoubtedly take a keen interest in how the situation unravels in due course, and in what Somerset county council does to support Avon and Somerset police in delivering reduced crime and improved confidence. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that the debate will have been of use to him.

Question put and agreed to.

House adjourned.