Police

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 1:53 pm on 8 February 2012.

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Photo of David Ruffley David Ruffley Conservative, Bury St Edmunds 1:53, 8 February 2012

I certainly do. My right hon. Friend the Policing Minister gave a tour de force earlier when he explained in detail exactly how we might achieve more for just a little less spending. I reinforce the fact that between 2000 and 2008 there were heroic real-terms increases, and they have not gone away. We are not wiping away from the baseline the very high totals that were accrued, sadly, on the back of money that we subsequently discovered the country did not really have. Nevertheless, this is by no means some hacking-off-of-limbs strategy, and I think that it does a disservice to a grown-up debate to suggest that it is a bleeding-stump strategy.

I would like to say something about my local police force in Suffolk. Suffolk has the second lowest cost per head for policing out of the 43 forces in this country. It has an historically low crime rate, because by and large we are a very civilised and well-behaved county, which is why I am particularly proud to represent a Suffolk constituency. I acknowledge that the chief constable, Simon Ash, with whom I have a fruitful and friendly dialogue, is concerned about the effect that the spending constraints we are considering will have on his force. I do not agree with him, but it might be useful to remind ourselves of the composition of police spending in Suffolk.

The general grant from the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government to Suffolk for 2011-12 was £76.9 million. Specific grants added to that were £4.4 million. The council tax precept was £41.4 million, and fees and other charges were £6.4 million. That means that just over £129 million was spent in the current financial year on keeping Suffolk safe. The savings that the force has made in the past two years are quite instructive. The actual savings for 2010-11 totalled £2.6 million—consider that as a percentage of the £129 million spent overall last year—and the forecast annual savings for the current financial year are even higher, at £3.9 million. Projected savings for the four years from 2012-13 to 2015-16 are as follows: £7.3 million, £3.7 million, 2.3 million and £0.9 million.

Approximately 60% of the savings in Suffolk over the comprehensive spending review period will be achieved through collaborative working and better procurement, particularly with Norfolk constabulary. That really bears out the statements that my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister made earlier. Suffolk is finding 60% of the savings not through vicious head count cuts to uniformed officers—over half the savings are the result of smarter thinking, which I think should have been done before now. In the last Parliament the totemic collaborative project was between Essex and Kent, which was the example everyone cited, but the Norfolk and Suffolk model undoubtedly equals that, because it is delivering the savings that should have been delivered many years ago.

What about the number of uniformed officers? This is extremely politically sensitive—some might even say toxic—and much has been made of it by Opposition Members and Front Benchers. To provide some perspective, in my police authority area the number of full-time equivalent uniformed officers, as at 31 March 2009, was 1,291. At March 2010 it was 1,246 officers, and in March 2011 it was 1,241. The next set of figures is quite instructive. The chief constable argues that by 31 March 2015, if the one-year council tax freeze grant is accepted from April this year, the number of uniformed officers will be 1,189. Even if the council tax freeze grant is accepted, he predicts a reduction from 1,241 to 1,189. He says that if a council tax increase is approved from April 2012, the reduction would be fewer than 10 officers. If we go the council tax increase route, the number will fall from 1,241 to 1,232. He is arguing, as he has said in the regional press, that there will be a reduction in the number of police officers in Suffolk.

The figures are not hugely welcome from my point of view, because I believe neither that we should increase council tax in Suffolk, nor that the chief constable needs to reduce the number of officers by the magnitude he suggests, and he argues that officers will have to be lost whichever route is taken. I firmly believe, and agree with the Government, that visible policing is not a direct function of the numbers alone. There is not a positive correlation of one between the number of officers and excellent policing.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford was perfectly right to say that we needed 16,000 officers on the streets when the London riots were at their zenith, but those were, by and large, extraordinary events. We certainly did not necessarily need more police officers in order to get 16,000 on the streets. Many of us thought that rather bad management by the then leadership of the Met meant that it took three days or so to get 16,000 uniformed officers on the street. They existed, as we have more than 140,000 uniformed officers in Great Britain, so getting 16,000 Met officers on the street was not purely a numbers game; they were there already.