§ 6. Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West)If he plans to meet chief constables to discuss recruitment and housing costs. [147092]
§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw)Ministers meet chief constables frequently. The crime fighting fund will enable police forces to recruit 9,000 police officers over and above the number previously planned in the three years 2000–01 to 2002–03, with the aim of bringing numbers overall to record levels. Following the increase of £3,300 in the London allowance, which I agreed last year, an offer has been made of £2,000 for those working in the home counties forces within a 30-mile radius of central London, and £1,000 for those within a radius of 30 to 40 miles. The Police Negotiating Board is meeting on 8 February and I very much hope that an agreement will be reached without delay.
§ Mr. SwayneThe Secretary of State will be aware that the crime fighting fund has granted Hampshire an additional 82 officers in the current financial year, but that because of our inability to recruit them, we are having to ask that 62 of those be deferred to next year. That leaves us having to recruit 300 fantasy officers next year. The right hon. Gentleman's arrangements for London and the radius around it will make our position worse. What does he propose to do to address the economic realities facing recruits in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight?
§ Mr. StrawThe hon. Gentleman fantasises about a variety of things, and we are all aware of the phantoms in his life. I am pleased to reassure him that the increase in recruitment is real. In January 2001, there was an increase 651 in the number of recruits entering training college of two and a half times—to 820—over the figures for January 12 months ago. The hon. Gentleman should bear in mind the fact that other home counties forces such as Sussex, Surrey and Kent do not have the recruitment difficulties that Hampshire is experiencing.
The hon. Gentleman asked me what we are doing about the problem in Hampshire. We have made an offer to the Police Negotiating Board. I hope that that offer or something very similar to it is quickly accepted. The sooner it is accepted, the sooner the genuine recruitment problems, which I recognise exist, will be sorted out. I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that the chief constable of Hampshire, Mr. Kernaghan, wrote to me only last week to say that he was pleased to learn that the Home Office was addressing the needs of home counties forces.
§ Mr. Christopher Leslie (Shipley)When my right hon. Friend next meets the chief constable of West Yorkshire, will he discuss with him the plans to reorganise the divisional command structures in the Bradford district? There are extremely welcome plans to rationalise and reduce the amount spent on administration and bureaucracy, but we need to ensure that those resources can be redirected to increasing the number of front-line police officers even further.
§ Mr. StrawI am happy to receive representations from my hon. Friend about the reorganisation of the Bradford district. That is a matter for the chief constable and the police authority. Many other chief constables and police authorities have reorganised their command structure, and as a result have assured the release of hundreds of additional officers for front-line duties.
§ Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire)On 16 February last year, the Prime Minister said:
every single promise that we made—on getting waiting lists down, getting class sizes down and increasing police numbers—will be met by the next general election".—[Official Report, 16 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 948.]The Government are failing to get real waiting lists down, and they are failing to decrease the number of large secondary classes. Can the Home Secretary guarantee that there will be at least as many police officers at the time of the next general election as there were at the time of the last?
§ Mr. StrawI am happy to be judged by the promises that we made, which included reducing class sizes in infant schools—not in secondary schools. That promise has already been met, and waiting lists have already been reduced. The Conservative party made mendacious promises about police numbers, promising an extra 5,000 police officers when funding was to decrease. We did no such thing. The promises that we have made about increasing the number of police officers year by year will be met, and by 2003–04 police numbers will be at record levels—no thanks to the Conservative party.
§ Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow)When I discussed the issue of police recruitment in my constituency recently, I was told that one of the worst decisions affecting recruitment in the south-east in the past 10 years had been the abolition of the housing allowance by the previous Government in 1994. The £1,000 and £2,000 allowances 652 are an effective response to the problem, but they have been on the table for some while now. Will my right hon. Friend press the Police Negotiating Board and the Police Federation to reach a speedy conclusion, because that will lead to higher recruitment in my constituency?
§ Mr. BercowRobert Halfon for Harlow!
§ Mr. StrawI do not know who he is, but he certainly will not be for Harlow.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) is entirely right. I share his frustration with the proceedings of the Police Negotiating Board. I am afraid to say that, as a result of the difficulties that preceded my offer of a £3,500 increase for Metropolitan police officers, the process was unnecessarily delayed for months and months. I hope that local police federations representing the forces, especially in the home counties, will put pressure on their colleagues in the national federation to accept that this is the best offer that could be made; that the problems go back directly to the previous Government, who abolished the housing allowance altogether; and that our proposal will make a big difference to recruitment, not least in my home county area of Harlow.