Police: Financial Sustainability

Greater Manchester police have lost 2,000 officers—a quarter of their strength—in the past eight years. The Minister is right to refer to the increasing demands, and particularly to the huge and increasing amount of time that the police have to spend dealing with people in mental health crisis, which is a massive problem in south Manchester. If the Government are going to make massive cuts to council services, mental health services, substance abuse services, homelessness support, domestic violence services and youth services, are they not going to have to increase funding to the police disproportionately because it is the police who have to pick up the pieces from all those other cuts?