Police Numbers

HC Deb 22 April 2002 vol 384 cc10-2

5. Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood)

What plans he has to increase the number of police officers. [47064]

The Minister for Policing, Crime Reduction and Community Safety (Mr. John Denham)

At the end of January, police numbers stood at the record level of 128,748. We are on track to reach our target of 130,000 officers by spring 2003.

The Government's crime fighting fund has played a major part in driving up officer numbers. It is enabling forces to take on 9,000 recruits, over and above previous plans, in the three years to March 2003.

Mrs. Humble

I welcome the additional police numbers that my right hon. Friend has announced. Will he join me in congratulating Blackpool police force on using its additional 45 police officers not only actively to reduce crime, but to reduce the fear of crime through high-visibility policing? Does he agree that the best way to further that aim is to reduce the level of paperwork that keeps so many police officers at their station desks?

Mr. Denham

I am very pleased to hear of the way in which Lancashire police are meeting my hon. Friend's constituents" policing needs. She is absolutely right to say that we must go further to reduce paperwork. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said, we have drawn attention to that problem. We have asked Sir David O'Dowd, the former chief inspector of constabulary, to lead a taskforce, which is composed overwhelmingly of serving police officers of all ranks, to identify for us the measures that need to be taken to reduce bureaucracy. The measures that we have already taken to introduce video identity parades show how committed we are to making progress and to freeing up police officers" time for patrolling duties.

Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell)

The Minister will be aware that areas such as Berkshire, which have very high housing costs and are very close to the Met, are having serious recruitment and retention problems. What does the right hon. Gentleman propose to do about that, particular bearing in mind the fact that his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has increased national insurance contributions, which will make it even harder for hard-pressed police officers to buy or rent property in our area?

Mr. Denham

We are working closely with the very small number of forces that have not done as well as the vast majority of forces in the past few years in delivering the extra 4,500 police officers across the country to whom my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred earlier. I am confident that the problems that have affected recruitment in each of those areas are being identified and that they, too, will benefit from the growth in police numbers that the police service as a whole will experience.

Mr. Peter Pike (Burnley)

Although I accept everything that my right hon. Friend says—we have done a lot to improve policing throughout the country—I am sure that he will recognise that people are always saying that we need more police in the communities. Does he believe that community wardens—such as those we have in Burnley, working together with the police—help to give communities the better standard of life that we want them to have?

Mr. Denham

I agree with my hon. Friend. As he knows, I recently visited Burnley and was able to hear at first hand how popular has been the police's decision to develop more fully the community beat officer role and the very important links between police officers and the extended police family provided by community wardens. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to that.

Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset)

Have not the questions and the answers this afternoon demonstrated that policing is not just a matter of numbers and that the main question is how the police are managed and deployed and what they have to spend their time doing? I am genuinely puzzled by the messages that Ministers seem to be giving us. Half the time they seem to deny that they are centralising and bureaucratising the police, whereas the rest of the time they appear to be justifying doing so. The Home Secretary and I have recently been studying policing in America. What has the Minister concluded from studying policing in the Netherlands and Belgium?

Mr. Denham

We are working with the police service to deliver the type of police service that we, the police and, more important, the public want to see in local communities: more police officers, with more time to play a visible role in the community. The hon. Gentleman asks about policing in the Netherlands. I can tell him that one of the things that the Dutch do is to deploy people very similar to the community support officers that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis wishes to deploy in London—something which the Government will make possible, but which the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats want to deny to the people of London.

Mr. Letwin

I am delighted to hear that the Minister is so knowledgeable, but it is odd that that is not the way officials and policemen in the Netherlands and Belgium describe the situation. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in the Netherlands and more recently in Belgium, neighbourhood police officers—the bobbies on the beat, who become the custodians of the neighbourhood—are described by large numbers of officers who have spoken to us as the elite force, because that is what people demand locally?

Is the Minister also aware that, in the Netherlands and more recently in Belgium, increased and increasingly effective control over street crime has been brought about by decreasing central bureaucracy and decentralising control over the police? Is he aware that by international standards his efforts and those of the Home Secretary to centralise control over the police in this country under clause 5 of the Police Reform Bill are a retrograde eccentricity?

Mr. Denham

The hon. Gentleman is about as wrong as it is possible to be. He is wrong in his characterisation of the Government's proposals and in his suggestion that we are opposed to developing the role of community beat officers—my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and many others have been advocates of that essential role of police officers in the community. The hon. Gentleman is also wrong to oppose the types of reform that, according to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, would enable him to free the time of police officers from the routine but necessary patrolling duties that have been seen since 11 September. The Commissioner would like to be able to free those officers to join the fight against street crime. That fight has already had a big impact on street crime, yet the hon. Gentleman opposes it. He is wrong to oppose those changes.