My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given to an Urgent Question answered earlier by my right honourable friend the Minister for Policing. The Statement is as follows:
“The NAO does incredibly important work and the Government are grateful for their work on police financial sustainability. The Home Secretary made clear to the Police Superintendents’ Association conference that we understand and agree that the police are under pressure and we are determined to support them. I am hugely appreciative of the hard work our police officers put in daily to keep the public safe.
I should say to this House that I do not recognise the suggestion that Ministers do not understand the pressures on the police. Last year, I personally spoke to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, including front-line officers, and I commissioned analysis to improve our understanding of police demand and resilience. I did explain our findings before this House last year at the time of the provisional police funding settlement. We recognised the pressures on the police, including from complex crime and the threat of terrorism. We provided a funding settlement which is increasing total investment in the police system by over £460 million in 2018-19. This includes £50 million for counterterrorism, £130 million for national priorities and £280 million in force funding from increases in precept income.
We are not stopping there. I have already indicated that we will afford the police the same precept flexibility in 2019-20, subject to them meeting productivity and efficiency asks. We are working closely with the police to jointly build the evidence base on police demand, resilience and capability ahead of the spending review.
The report is valuable in highlighting pressure on the police, but we do not believe it gives weight to these issues: first, the strength of the local accountability structure through PCCs, which were introduced by this Government; secondly, our support to the independent inspectorate in developing force management statements—a key tool in getting better data to identify and manage future demand; thirdly, we monitor effectiveness publicly through HMICFRS, whose independent authority we have strengthened; fourthly, we have asked the police to reform themselves and, as such, it is appropriate that the police have their own strategy in their Policing Vision 2025.
We take the report extremely seriously and our Permanent Secretary has written to the NAO to accept these points. However, the House should be under no illusion: this Government remain extremely committed to ensuring that forces have the resources they need to do the important work that they do”.
3.49 pm