Police Grant Report

I beg to move,

That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2024-25 (HC 482), which was laid before this House on 31 January, be approved.

Police officers, police community support officers, special constables and police staff up and down the country do great work every single day of the week, keeping us and our constituents safe, very often putting themselves in the line of danger to protect the public. I am sure Members across the House will want to pay tribute to those officers and staff, and thank them for the work they do. The vast majority of officers are decent, hard-working and brave, and we owe them a great deal.

The police look after and support us; it is important that we support and look after them in return. The funding settlement that we present to Parliament today does that. We are increasing the funding available for policing by £843 million compared with last year. Last year’s funding had already been increased by £330 million, accounting for the police pay settlement, effective from 1 September, so next year’s envelope in total will be £18.4 billion.

Within that, we are prioritising the frontline. We are getting more money than ever before into the hands of police and crime commissioners, who spend money on frontline policing. Presuming they use their precept flexibility, which I think they will, police and crime commissioners will receive an extra £922 million next year, which is a cash increase of 6% compared with the previous year.

I thank the Minister for Policing for those increases he mentions and for his help on section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 and dealing with illegal motorcycles in my area. The issue is that Bedfordshire police survives on a series of top-up grants because the national funding formula is not very fair to us. Does the Minister foresee a time when we can get rid of those grants and have our core funding baked into our core funding, so we do not rely on special grants?

My hon. Friend campaigns tirelessly for Bedfordshire policing and to combat the scourge of antisocial motorcycle use. I believe we will shortly be organising a meeting to discuss that issue. He is right that Bedfordshire receives special grant support in order to fund its activity, particularly in relation to gang violence in certain urban parts of the county, but he is also right that we need to change the underlying funding formula because it is over 10 years out of date. It needs to better reflect population changes and changes in crime, and better reflect issues of sparsity and rurality. The Home Office is actively working on that.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the very good meeting he had with Lincolnshire MPs yesterday. As he is an outstanding Minister, he will appreciate that Lincolnshire, even taking account of the extra money, is the worst funded authority in the country, with the lowest staffing level, and faces particular challenges because of its sparsity. Delivering any public service, including policing, over a sparsely populated area is a challenge. So, will he take a close look at what extra he can do in anticipation of the much-needed change to the funding formula, which he is advocating today?

I met my right hon. Friend yesterday evening and he made a powerful case on Lincolnshire police, and for updating the funding formula, as we have discussed. He also made the case on Lincolnshire’s needs over the coming financial year, which I undertook to go away and look at. As he says, the issues of sparsity and rurality that affect Lincolnshire, as well as other counties, need to be properly accounted for. He spoke extremely powerfully and compellingly in our meeting yesterday.

The funding picture that the Minister paints is not entirely accurate. In West Yorkshire, direct funding from Ministers fell by £25 million between 2015-16 and 2019-20. What is more, the cumulative total of Government funding cut from West Yorkshire police since 2015-16 is more than £100 million. Once the figures that the Minister is announcing are compared to that cumulative amount, it will surely change things, and the picture will not look as rosy.

On longer-term funding trends, the total cash funding for police in 2010-11 was about £13.1 billion. As I set out, it is now £18.4 billion, so it is £5.3 billion higher in cash terms. It has essentially kept pace with inflation, although crime is lower. He mentions West Yorkshire; the central Government grant for West Yorkshire in the financial year 2023-24, with the extra money for pay that I mentioned, is £415 million. Next year, the Government grant for West Yorkshire will go up by about £31 million, which is well above inflation, to £446 million. If we add in the police precept, which may go up a little bit as well, West Yorkshire’s funding next year will be 7.1% higher. If we look at policing as a whole, frontline policing will be up by 6% next year.

Can I ask the Minister about the precept?

In just a moment. Overall, next year, police funding will be up 6% on this year for frontline forces. Inflation is currently only 4% and is forecast to fall further.

Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), is it not the reality that the contribution of the police precept to the overall cost of policing has increased substantially? In the case of Dyfed-Powys police, the precept was 37% of total funding in 2010-11, but this year it is 54.4%, so the burden is being pushed on to local taxpayers via the precept.

Overall, across England and Wales, around two thirds of the total funding comes from central Government. As the hon. Gentleman says, that varies by police force, but on Dyfed-Powys police, the Government grant is going up next year by £6 million, which is nearly 10%, whereas the precept component is only going up by about £3 million. The Government grant for Dyfed-Powys will go up by double the amount of the precept increase. I say again that frontline police forces next year will have a funding increase of 6%, at a time when inflation is only 4% and falling.

Donna Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, has launched a consultation. My view is that if constituents attach great importance to policing—certainly, my correspondence tells me that they do—then they will be prepared to pay for it.

My right hon. Friend is quite right. Of course, all policing, whether funded from central Government or via the precept, is ultimately paid for by taxpayers. In the most recent spending review a few years ago, the precept limit was set at £10—that is, English forces could put up the precept by only £10. We have given more flexibility—this year it is £15, and next year it will be £13—so that PCCs can decide to increase the precept by a bit more if they choose to, which is their democratic right.

On the issue of police and crime commissioners, I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the appalling comments made by the Cheshire police and crime commissioner about schoolgirls wearing very short skirts. This raises huge questions about whether victims can have confidence in the justice system in Cheshire. Will he take the opportunity to distance himself from those comments and join us in calling on the PCC to resign?

I am afraid that I have not seen those comments, so it would not be right for me to remark on them, but I will say that the Government are completely committed to combating violence against women and girls, to increasing rape prosecutions and to increasing prosecutions for serious sexual assaults. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) and I had a meeting with policing leaders on that very topic just in the past few days, and those are actions to which we are committed.

In addition to the substantial funding increase of £922 million—nearly £1 billion—for frontline policing, an above inflation increase of 6% has been announced today. We have of course increased total police expenditure by about £2.7 billion since 2019, which has funded the police uplift programme. It is worth reiterating that in March last year, we exceeded our target, delivering 149,566 officers—about 3,500 more than we have seen at any time in the history of policing in England and Wales. That is an important commitment, and our intention is to maintain those officer numbers going forward. We have constructed the police uplift ringfence and the financial arrangements for this coming financial year to enable police forces around the country to maintain those higher officer numbers.

As the Minister said, police forces across the country do some great work. That applies to Leicestershire police, particularly those in Loughborough who have to deal with county lines. Many of the new officers are based in Loughborough and are doing an excellent job. The increase in the precept is also excellent and very welcome in Leicestershire, but can we do more—that is, not just increase the value of the precept, but ensure that what police are asked to do is more efficient? Redaction is one example. Police should not have to redact evidence when 25% of cases that go to the Crime Prosecution Service are not taken further forward.