Cleveland Police

What steps her Department is taking to support the improvement of Cleveland Police.

The Home Office, alongside other policing partners, continues to provide Cleveland police with the support it requires through Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and fire & rescue services’ police performance oversight group, a meeting of which I was happy to attend a couple of weeks ago. Cleveland’s funding will increase by up to £7.2 million in the next year, and as of 31 December, it had recruited an additional 159 officers through our uplift programme, with a further 70 officers to be recruited in the coming year.

Our Conservative police and crime commissioner candidate Steve Turner is rightly calling for a review of the funding allocation formula, so that Cleveland can access future rounds of violence reduction unit funding and start to tackle this menace on our streets. Will my hon. Friend meet Steve Turner and me to discuss this issue and unlock violence reduction unit funding for Cleveland?

My hon. Friend is a doughty and, I have to say, given recent announcements, successful advocate for investment and funding for his part of the world, and I would of course be more than happy to meet him. He is right that Cleveland missed out on violence reduction unit funding last time, falling just outside the funding formula, but I would be happy to talk to him about what more we can do to help the police and crime commissioner—who hopefully will be a Conservative after the May elections—and the chief constable to tackle some of the violent crime that plagues parts of Cleveland, and bring peace and light into the future.