Extract from Business
Questions
(Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
(Lab): Nationally, nine in 10 crimes are sadly going
unpunished, including murders in Southwark, where our police are
really struggling, having lost 400 officers and police community
support officers since 2010. Will the Government provide time to
debate why the Home Office is ignoring the recommendation of its
own advisers to provide an extra £100 million to the Metropolitan
Police Service, which is equivalent to more than 4,000 additional
officers desperately needed by communities across our capital?
: As I said earlier,
the Mayor of London is responsible for policing and priorities,
and he has a £16.5 billion budget. I absolutely agree with the
hon. Gentleman that the Mayor should be looking very seriously at
his budget allocation to policing. The Government have enabled a
further £460 million of funding for local policing through the
council tax precept. That is how the Government are ensuring that
Police and Crime Commissioners can meet local needs.
Extract from Public
Bill committee on the Offensive Weapons Bill
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the
Home Department (Victoria Atkins):...Just before schools
rose for the summer holidays, I wrote to headteachers across the
country and invited them to encourage their teaching staff to
talk to children about knife crime before the holidays. We were
conscious that sadly, summer holidays sometimes mean that
children find themselves in very damaging situations. I do a lot
of work on the curriculum with my colleagues in the Department
for Education, and gangs and their impact form part of the latest
safeguarding guidance from the Department. That issue is also
addressed through the serious violence taskforce, which brings
together the Home Office, all other Government Departments,
senior Ministers, the Mayor of London, chief
constables, Police and Crime Commissioners,
charities, healthcare providers, and so on. That taskforce is
doing a great deal of work on what more we can do through early
intervention to help children at an earlier stage.
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