Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab) With crime rising, does the
Prime Minister regret cutting 21,000 police officers? The Prime
Minister The right hon. Gentleman raises the issue of police
numbers and crime. What we actually have seen from the crime survey
is that crime is now down at record low levels....Request free trial
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With crime rising, does the Prime Minister regret cutting
21,000 police officers?
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The right hon. Gentleman raises the issue of police
numbers and crime. What we actually have seen from the
crime survey is that crime is now down at record low
levels. That is what has been achieved, and it has been
achieved by a Conservative Government who at the same
time have been protecting police budgets.
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Recorded crime is up by one fifth since 2010 and violent
crime is up by 20%, and during the period when the Prime
Minister was Home Secretary £2.3 billion was cut from
police budgets. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of
constabulary warns that neighbourhood policing risks
being eroded and the shortage of detectives is a
“national crisis”. Does the Prime Minister think the
inspectorate is scaremongering?
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The right hon. Gentleman mentions the issue about
recorded crime, and one of the challenges we have seen in
the police in recent years is ensuring we get proper
recording particularly of certain types of crime. I am
pleased to say that we have seen improvements over the
past seven to eight years in the recording by the police
of certain types of crime.
The right hon. Gentleman also talks about the issue of
police budgets. As I have said, this is a Government who
are protecting police budgets, and I might remind him
that the Labour party’s former shadow Home Secretary, now
the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester,
himself said that the police could take an up to 10% cut
in their budgets.
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The inspectorate also found that the police are failing
to properly record tens of thousands of offences, and in
addition to cutting 21,000 police officers, the
Government have cut 6,700 police community support
officers. The chief constable of Bedfordshire says:
“We do not have the resources to keep residents safe...
The position is a scandal.”
Too many people do not feel safe, and too many people are
not safe. We have just seen the highest rise in recorded
crime for a quarter of a century. The chief constable of
Lancashire said the Government’s police cuts had made it
much more difficult to keep people safe. Is he wrong?
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On the issue of recording crime, the right hon. Gentleman
mentions HMIC, and when I was Home Secretary, I asked
HMIC to look at the recording of crime to ensure that
police forces were doing it properly. Indeed, some
changes were made as a result, so we now see better
recording of crime. We also see £450 million extra being
made available to the police. Over the past few years, we
have also seen the creation of the National Crime Agency,
and our police forces are taking more notice of helping
to support vulnerable victims and doing more on modern
slavery and domestic violence—taking seriously issues
that were not taken seriously before.
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If you ask the inspectorate to look at unrecorded crime
and it tells you what is going on, the least you could do
is act on what it tells you. I want to quote something
that may sound familiar to the Prime Minister:
“The first duty of the Government is to protect the
public and keep them safe, and I have to say to the
Government that they are not putting enough focus on
police resources.”—[Official Report,
18 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 5.]
If she casts her eyes to the far Conservative Back
Benches, she will see the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip
Davies), and that is what he said about her Government
and what they are doing. Gun crime has increased by 20%
in the past year, and the chief constable of Merseyside
recently said:
“So have I got sufficient resources to fight gun crime?
No, I haven’t.”
Does the Prime Minister think he is crying wolf?
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The right hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact
that the Government are protecting police budgets. In
fact, we are not just protecting police budgets, but
increasing them with an extra £450 million. We are also
ensuring that our police have the powers that they need
to do the job that we want them to do. I seem to remember
that the right hon. Gentleman does not have that good a
record when it comes to increasing the powers for the
police to do their job.
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Since 2015, direct Government funding to the police has
fallen by £413 million, and Chief Constable of West Midlands
police said:
“The current flat cash settlement for policing means
force budgets will fall in real terms.”
In addition to police cuts, other public service cuts are
clearly contributing to the rise in crime: 3,600 youth
workers have lost their jobs; 600 youth centres have been
closed and boarded up; the probation service has been cut
and privatised; and reoffenders are committing more
offences. When it comes to tackling crime, prevention and
cure are two sides of the same coin, so why are the
Government cutting both of them?
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We have put in place various pieces of work on anti-knife
crime, on serious violence and on issues such as domestic
violence. But I come back to the point I made in my last
response: the right hon. Gentleman voted against changing
the law so that anyone caught carrying a knife for a
second time would face a custodial sentence. He has
called for much shorter sentences for those who break the
law. He might want to reflect on the fact that knife
crime fell when there was a Conservative Mayor in London,
but knife crime is going up now that there is a Labour
Mayor in London.
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I am very clear that crime is of course wrong. The way to
deal with it is by having an effective probation service,
by community service orders and by the rehabilitation of
offenders. What the Prime Minister said goes to the heart
of her record: she was Home Secretary for six years, but
crime is up, violent crime is rising, police numbers are
down and chief constables are saying they no longer have
the resources to keep communities safe. After seven years
of cuts, will the Prime Minister today admit that her
Government’s relentless cuts to the police, probation and
social services have left us all less safe? The reality
is that we cannot have public safety on the cheap.
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The right hon. Gentleman really needs to reflect on what
Labour would be doing if it was in government. You can
only pay for our public services if you have a strong
economy. What would we see with the Labour party? We do
not need to ask ourselves what we would see, because the
shadow Chancellor’s adviser told us at the weekend:
“We need to think about the obvious problems which might
face a radical Labour government, such as capital flight
or a run on the pound”.
That is what Labour would do: bankrupt Britain. The
police would have less money under Labour than under the
Conservatives.
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