§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
2.35 pm§ Mr. Ken Hargreaves (Hyndburn)I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department for being present to reply to this debate despite his family bereavement. I offer him my sincere sympathy on the death of his father.
I welcome this opportunity to raise once again the cost of policing the conference of the party in government. That issue unites members of all parties in the House and at county council level. It also unites north and south, because Dorset and Sussex are affected, although it is true to say that Lancashire is the most badly affected because a conference is held in Blackpool every two years.
I am pleased that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre (Mr. Mans) have been able to join us. But for prior constituency engagements, my hon. Friends the Members for Pendle (Mr. Lee) and for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind), my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) and the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) would have been present today.
The subject of this debate has been raised on many occasions in the House as well as in meetings with the Home Secretary. In December 1985 a delegation met the Home Secretary and there were further talks in October 1987 with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) when he was at the Home Office.
In February 1988 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary refused to meet a deputation, but in July 1989 there was a meeting with Lord Ferrers. In May 1990 there was another meeting with the Home Secretary. In between there were debates and questions in the House. We have certainly been persistent and I make no apology for raising the issue once more. I believe that the case that we have put forward on each previous occasion has been just, even if that fact has not yet been recognised by the Government. We do not intend to let the matter drop, even if the reply from my hon. Friend the Minister today is, sadly, no more helpful than on previous occasions. We should be letting our constituents down if we failed to continue to press for fair play.
The tragic and evil events in Brighton in 1984 clearly meant that from then onwards the resources devoted to policing the conference of the party in government had to be increased to ensure that that sad event could not be repeated. No one could disagree with that. The alternative would have been to cancel the conference and thereby give in to terrorism. That is simply not an option. We must continue as normally as possible, but take all the necessary precautions to safeguard the lives of Ministers and others attending the conference. The police forces of Lancashire, Sussex and Dorset now do that with commendable efficiency, patience and at great cost to the community charge payers of those counties. Because it is necessary to provide security at the highest level for members of the Government, the issue attains national importance and as such it should be funded nationally.
The policing implications for the conference have a serious effect on the adequacy and efficiency of the policing 614 of the remainder of the police area in the run-up to, and during, the conference. The situation can be eased only by incurring considerable expenditure on overtime payments.
One argument against providing special funding has been that, from time to time, all police forces have to deal with matters that place considerable financial burdens upon them. That may be so, but although an unusual murder, for example, can occur anywhere, the Blackpool conference occurs only in Lancashire, and it occurs every other year. No other force has or will have that commitment.
It was said in a ministerial reply that, from time to time, every force has to face requirements that could be argued to be of national rather than local origin. For Lancashire, the conference does not occur from time to time; it represents a continuing and substantial financial burden.
The main argument against increasing the amount of grant is that a party conference is far from the only event which could be claimed as having primarily national significance. It is claimed that most police authorities might make similar claims in other circumstances. On 11 January 1990, the Minister told us that one example of such a factor for which police authorities would want to make a claim for extra resources would be increased costs in relation to the protection of Ministers. We in Lancashire understand that problem because we faced those extra costs, too, when my former right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ribble Valley was Home Secretary. On previous occasions, the Lancashire police authority and Lancashire hon. Members have pressed for extra support for the additional costs incurred by police authorities in providing security for Ministers.
I am grateful to the Government for listening to and accepting the arguments in relation to that claim and, more important, for deciding to include supernumerary police officers on special protection duty in the measure of police establishment for the police spending assessment in 1991–92. That decision was welcomed by Lancashire police authority and by Lancashire's community charge payers. The decision was correct, because considerable costs can be incurred for which there was previously no additional funding, simply by accident of place of residence.
However, given that the Government recognised the justice of that case, I am at a complete loss to understand how they can continue to decide not to treat the additional costs of policing the Government party conferences in the same way. The principles involved are the same. My constituents and the people of Lancashire, Dorset and Sussex find it difficult to understand how the cost of providing special protection for a Minister when he is at home qualifies for additional funding, but when the same Minister meets the rest of his ministerial colleagues for a week in Blackpool, Bournemouth or Brighton, there is no additional contribution from central Government. In effect, we are saying that when there is a relatively small increased cost to many different police authorities, we will help them, but when there is a large additional cost falling on one police authority, we will not. I see no logic, justice or sense in that.
I welcome the increased spending on the police that has taken place under this Government. Unlike the previous Labour Government, we have recognised the need to pay the police properly and to increase the strength of police forces. Lancashire had its share of benefits from that increase, which enabled the authority to recruit more policemen and policewomen to combat rising crime.
615 However, my constituents feel—I am sure that the feeling is shared by other people in Lancashire—that the £0.5 million that had to be found by community charge payers in Lancashire to help pay the policing costs of the previous party conference could more beneficially, at least from the point of view of my communiity charge payers, have been spent on further increasing police manpower in the county, and not least in Hyndburn.
To sum up, it is clear that the costs of protecting Ministers are exceptional, whether they be at home or at their party conference. In respect of the former, the argument has already been conceded, and a relatively simple adjustment has been made to the standard spending assessment methodology to make it possible to deal with ministerial protection. A similar simple adjustment could be made to cover security provision at the Government party's conference. On behalf of my constituents and the people of Lancashire generally, as well as those in Sussex and Dorset, I hope that the Minister will agree that the present situation is even more unfair and illogical than previously and that he will seek to make the necessary changes.
§ Mr. Keith Mans (Wyre)rose—
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)Does the hon. Gentleman have the consent of both the Minister and the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves)? I see that he does.
§ Mr. MansI congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves) on gaining an opportunity for this debate. I thoroughly endorse everything that he said. My constituency abuts Blackpool. I am aware of the tremendous arrangements that have to be made every year for party conferences, but especially every other year when the Government party goes to Blackpool. Each time that that happens, the security arrangements have to be that much more detailed and expensive. We are rapidly approaching the point where the Government must agree that this cannot go on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn made the good point that an adjustment in the standard spending assessment was made for the protection of Ministers of the Crown. I cannot see why precisely the same method cannot be used for Government party conferences. I fully understand the various arguments made about counties that have other events, but, as my hon. Friend said, no other county is the same as Lancashire, because Blackpool has the Government party conference every other year. The problem has continued for decades and recently the burden has become excessive.
I request that my hon. Friend the Minister examine closely the matter again and determine whether we can use the present methodology for funding local government to provide more help for Lancashire and the other two counties affected by the Government party conference.
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerDoes the hon. and learned Gentleman have the consent of the hon. Member for Hyndburn and the Minister? I see that he has.
§ Mr. MiscampbellI have the appropriate leave and I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves) for giving me a few minutes of his precious time. I am a Blackpool Member, but I shall not confine my remarks to Blackpool. Blackpool is one of the three main conference resorts where the problem of funding security arrangements for the big political conferences arises.
In Blackpool the Government party conference causes disruption. Clearly, I shall not go into the arrangements, but some security measures have to be taken for months before a conference comes. Blackpool pays its share, like Lancashire.
All the hon. Members present are Lancashire Members and it is about Lancashire that I wish to make a point. Lancashire has to pay for security which does not benefit the people of the town or the rest of the county in any way. The expenses fall on the police. I should have thought that a way of overcoming the problem would be to include a specific sum in the police grant to acknowledge the problems of the three main conference resorts.
One has only to ask what would happen if the three main conference towns said that enough was enough. I suspect that the Government would find that it was convenient to provide the security money that seems so necessary. We have argued the case time and again. We have met Ministers. In a wide area of Lancashire people do not understand why the money is not available. I should go so far as to say that in many areas of Lancashire, and I am sure in Hyndburn, there is frustration which borders on anger.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd)I appreciate the sympathetic reference made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves) to my father's death.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate. He shows himself a persistent advocate of Lancashire's interests, as he sees them, especially on this issue, which is an important one. We all recognise that party conferences, especially of the party in government, place a considerable burden on the local police, whether in Lancashire, Dorset or Sussex. The strong views of the counties involved are well known and have been considered carefully by successive Home Secretaries. We have discussed the question before in this Chamber, most recently on 11 January 1990 in an Adjournment debate obtained by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) to which I also responded.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn made a most effective speech then and, if I recollect rightly, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre (Mr. Mans) intervened, as they did today. They did not use exactly the same words, but their sentiments were much the same. I am afraid that I shall pay them a similar compliment by using different words from those I used last time to present similar sentiments. I apologise to the House if I repeat some essential aspects of the points that I made last year, but the arguments simply have not changed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn has argued forcefully that the scale of costs involved in policing the 617 Government party conference means that it is unreasonable to expect the burden to fall on the county concerned, and that central Government should meet the costs. First, central Government already meet the greater part of policing costs, directly or indirectly. Fifty-one per cent. police specific grant is paid by the Home Office on all police current expenditure. Further support is provided through the police component of revenue support grant. That alone accounts for about three quarters of police expenditure. If we take into account the redistributed business rate and the community charge, we see that the proportion of policing costs met by the local charge payer is relatively small.
The House will recall that in 1986 police specific grant was raised from 50 to 51 per cent., providing substantial additional financial support for all police forces, in recognition of, among other things, the growing burden posed by terrorism. As I pointed out last year, Lancashire has received considerably more revenue from this increase in grant than the increase in costs for policing party conferences: since 1986 an additional £3.4 million in grant, against conference costs for 1987 and 1989 totalling about £1.9 million. Similar calculations can be applied to other counties hosting conferences and the details will be found at column 1193 of the Official Report. It would be wrong for me to take up the House's time now by repeating the figures that I set out last year.
The extensive funds made available for policing are not tied to any particular policing activity. That is properly a matter for the operational judgment of the chief constable. The bulk of policing is, and probably always will be, primarily local in character. Central Government funds are properly used for this. Specific grant and other sources of funding are our contribution to the overall needs of policing—a contribution which we are glad to make and which is a natural part of our tripartite policing structure with its balance of powers, duties and resources between the police authority, the chief constable and the Home Secretary.
I do not believe that because some events are supposedly more national than local, they should be funded wholly by central Government. Directly and indirectly, central Government already meet the lion's share of the costs of both national and local demands as it is. If we follow the logic of the argument to its conclusion, perhaps we should find local communities expected to meet the full cost of purely local policing.
It is self-evidently nonsense to try and define policing in terms of its national or its local significance. There is no such clear dividing line. If asked, I am sure that every chief constable in the country could point to expenditure on matters of national significance in his area, for which he would welcome 100 per cent. funding. Wiltshire could point to the annual solstice celebrations at Stonehenge and Thames Valley to the costs of protecting royal residences; Dover is a port of entry to the United Kingdom, not just to Kent; national heritage sites attract foreign visitors in enormous numbers; and so on. If any hon. Member sat down with his chief constable it would not take long to add to that list. The truth of the matter is that there is a mix of national and local interest in all policing, and that mix is reflected in the structure and funding arrangements for the police.
Expenditure on policing party conferences is not, the Government believe, so different in character from other events as to justify entirely separate arrangements. if it 618 were, I think that that would imply some fairly radical alterations to the basis of our policing. The case then can only be that the scale of the expenditure justifies special help.
In very rare cases, additional central support has been provided where forces have faced burdens that self-evidently cannot be met. But that is a strict test, and properly so. We are talking about wholly exceptional events that could not have been foreseen—and therefore budgeted for—and which pose such a burden that the efficiency and effectiveness of the force will be seriously threatened.
Party conferences are, of course, entirely predictable events, booked far ahead. By definition, they can be planned for and budgeted for—as, indeed, they have been for many years. While the expenditure is considerable, it is clearly not on a scale to prevent a force from providing an effective standard of policing. I must again refer to my remarks of last year. The additional cost of policing the Conservative party conference in Blackpool in 1989 was around 1.6 per cent. of a police budget of £96.8 million. In 1987, it was around 1 per cent. of the budget. For the conference in Bournemouth last year, the figure was nearly £2 million or 4 per cent. of Dorset's police expenditure of around £52.5 million. I agree that those are very substantial sums, even when grant of 51 per cent. has been paid on them, but they are not on a scale to threaten the effectiveness of a force as a whole. They have been, and can be, met by prudent planning by the police authority. I believe that they pose far less of a threat to a force than unforeseeable demands such as a major murder inquiry or a national disaster.
I understand the strength of feeling of hon. Members on this issue and we have been ready to listen to deputations urging their case. Lord Waddington, then Home Secretary, met a Lancashire deputation about a year ago to listen to its concerns. At his invitation, it submitted a paper setting out some detailed proposals. As my hon. Friends know, it was subsequently agreed that supernumerary officers on protection duties should be included in calculating police standard spending assessments—my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn specifically mentioned that—and hence in the distribution formula for revenue support grant. The Home Office could not accept that party conferences should somehow be translated into "notional manpower equivalents" and included in the distribution formula on that basis. It is after all, a formula for distributing a given sum and Lancashire's gain would be some other county's loss—a county with, perhaps an equally important national demand of a different sort. That prospect would have ultimately created a complex annual system of special pleading, however deeply felt, from every force and would prove unworkable in practice. After full consideration we rejected the proposal and Lord Waddington wrote to the Lancashire authorities explaining why. Although Lancashire has sought a further meeting to discuss the same point, my right hon. Friend the present Home Secretary has taken the view that there would be little to be gained by a further meeting to go over ideas that have already been discussed at a meeting and considered fully in writing.
I hope that my hon. Friends will recognise that the Government have given long and careful attention to the issues. We have been ready to discuss points in detail and to explain the position to those who have asked to put their 619 views in person. I am standing at the Dispatch Box for the second time in a year and a half to discuss the issues with my hon. Friends.
I conclude by stating the Government's position unequivocally. Policing covers a wide range of activities. All forces know that some of their activities are primarily of local benefit, while others, to varying degrees, will 620 benefit the country at large. A very large part of police funding is already met centrally, and the Government believe that there is no basis on which counties hosting party conferences should somehow be singled out for specially favourable financial treatment. I wish that I could give my hon. Friends encouragement on the issue, but it would be misleading if I did.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.