Debate on Police Finance

Monday 6th February 2006

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): I understand the point that the Minister is making. Overall, the sum of money has increased, but he made a very sweeping statement at the beginning of his speech. Does he realise that the settlement for Sussex police this year will place in jeopardy the significant improvements that they have undertaken?

Further, is the Minister aware that this funding settlement will mean that the counter-terrorism and dedicated security post that the force had anticipated

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will no longer be funded to the same level, and that it will receive about £400,000 less for resourcing such a key priority? That is an extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs. I urge the hon. Gentleman to examine a fairer way of distributing this money.

Paul Goggins; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department: We will get the opportunity to discuss some of these details. The dedicated security post to which the hon. Gentleman refers represents a major change in the way in which the funding of police services is being organised this year. That will now be provided through central funding, which obviously involves an adjustment. I acknowledge the improvements in Sussex and in many other parts of the country. I believe that this settlement will enable forces to sustain the improvements and changes that they have made. If we look, for example, at the number of staff that the police service has today, we find that more than 234,000 people are engaged in delivering policing-an increase of nearly 15 per cent. since 1997. Police numbers are historically high, at 141,270 on 30 September 2005. We are committed to maintaining a well-staffed police service.

Mr. Soames: I am sincerely grateful to the Minister and promise not to intervene on him again. He is being extremely courteous.

I wish to make a particular point. Sussex police has already planned to deliver £6.8 million in efficiency savings, but the final settlement will require further savings of £1.9 million in order to constrain any precept increase to below 5 per cent. I know that the Minister understands that that will almost certainly mean a real threat to service delivery and to the greatly improved performance of Sussex police. It really is not a decent or proper way to deal with Sussex police authority.

Paul Goggins: I am happy to pay tribute to Sussex police for its work, both in its financial administration

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and in front-line policing. It achieved impressive efficiency savings for the current year, and the expectation is that it will make further efficiencies next year. That expectation is not unusual now in any public service. There is an expectation of an ongoing search for efficiencies that can feed back in additional cash for the front-line services that we want more of.

For the first time, this year, the Government have provided planning totals for two years. I shall set out the police funding settlement for 2006–07. The figures for 2007–08 were set out as part of the provisional settlement announced and made on 31 January, and will be finalised next year. The settlement will support our key policing priorities published in the national community safety plan: reducing overall crime; bringing more offenders to justice; providing dedicated, visible, accessible and responsive neighbourhood police teams; tackling serious and organised crime, including improved intelligence and information sharing between partners; and protecting the country from both terrorism and domestic terrorism.

The total provision for policing grants and central provision in 2006–07 will be £10.574 million, an overall increase of 5.1 per cent. on the previous year. Most of this provision-some £7.372 million-is for the police general grant, which increases by 3.3 per cent. This allows us to provide a broadly flat-rate grant increase of 3.1 per cent.