The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) has been in this place for 18 years and we know him to be a tireless champion of the interests of his constituents, as well as the interests of rural areas and the need for, as he put it, a fair share for the shires. I congratulate him on securing the debate.
My hon. Friend asks me where I agree with him. I certainly agree with him and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) in expressing admiration for the work of frontline officers. They are extremely stretched at the moment. We ask a lot of them. They have to do difficult work under difficult circumstances. It is good to hear local Members of Parliament stand up to express their admiration and thanks for their work. I also thank my hon. Friend for recognising the importance of serious organised crime in the fundamental shift in the threat to public security that we are trying to police and protect our constituents from. He understands that, and I thank him for reflecting it in his comments. I hope he will welcome the updated Government serious organised crime strategy and the increased resources going into that area. They are necessary for exactly the reasons he sets out.
My hon. Friend left the House in no doubt about his view on the police and crime commissioner. All I would say is that she was elected. I hope that he agrees with me that the introduction of police and crime commissioners has sharpened the local accountability of the police. The bottom line is that the police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset has a job to do. She is accountable to the public and if the public of Somerset do not like what she does they can vote her out. That is the strength of the system we have introduced.
My hon. Friend talked about the task and finish group, and the report on Taunton. I very much take on board your point, Mr Deputy Speaker, that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) is not in her place. I also accept, however, that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset is clear that there are ramifications for his constituents. There are clearly mixed views about the accuracy of the report. I have read it and it raises important questions, both for the police and crime commissioner and the local borough council, about how resources are allocated across the county, the effectiveness of the local crime partnership and the efficacy of the response to 999 calls in rural areas. I am sure that they will be responsive to that report.
My hon. Friend is passionate about the need for proper attention to be paid to rural crime. I hope that he takes some satisfaction from the fact that the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which, in my experience, is an extremely powerful body for driving change across the police system, published a rural affairs strategy last July that reflects operational and policing priorities on rural crime. There are six priority themes: farm, machinery, plant and vehicle theft—I know my hon. Friend will welcome that—livestock offences, fuel theft, equine crime, fly-tipping and poaching. I know that the police chiefs are very aware of the need to give appropriate priority to rural crime.
On the specific report, as the House would expect, these are local decisions in a local debate on which it is not for me to opine. In response to my hon. Friend I can say what central Government are doing to support the battle against crime and disorder in Somerset and South Gloucestershire. My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) is entirely right: the research is very clear about the importance of bearing down on what is sometimes misleadingly called low-level crime, because all the evidence says that if we do not get on top of that, it can escalate to bigger problems.
Since being police Minister, my priority has been to get more resources into policing, because I recognised from a very early stage that the system is too stretched. The reality is that as a result of the actions that we have taken, as a country we will be investing almost £2 billion more next year in our police system than we were three years ago. Police forces up and down the country are recruiting additional officers and staff—almost 3,000, including at least 100 in Avon and Somerset—so we are heading in the right direction. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset and other colleagues who are concerned about this issue that this is a stepping stone towards the spending review, which is the next major event in shaping the resources available to our policing. I have given the undertaking, as has the Home Secretary, that police funding is an absolute priority for us in the spending review. Within that, I have also undertaken to look again at the issue of fair funding. I note, for example, that Avon and Somerset has fewer police officers per head of population than the national average. These are issues that we need to address through the comprehensive spending review.
In the meantime, the Government are investing money to support the police in better co-ordinating their efforts on county lines—that point was raised in the debate— because of course this crosses borders. We are already seeing the impact of additional investment through increased arrests and increased safeguarding of vulnerable children. Our support for the police—not just Avon and Somerset, but the whole system—goes further than that in terms of additional powers for the police, as they have requested, whether those are knife crime protection orders or the Offensive Weapons Bill, which is moving through Parliament and will make it even harder to buy and possess the most dangerous weapons. I know that the theft of vehicles is an issue particularly on farms and in rural areas. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are disturbed by the increase in vehicle crime. In fact, I have convened a taskforce to look specifically at it. The taskforce brings together industry, including the insurance industry, and all stakeholders to bear down on the problem.
Finally on our support for our police and our ability to hold them to account for their performance, we continue to attach enormous importance to the system of accountability we have set up, not just with police and crime commissioners but with independent inspection, which means that we can identify what good looks like, where it is and where things need to improve.
Finally, I would point out that Avon and Somerset police, stretched though they are, are rated by Her Majesty’s independent inspectorate as good for efficiency, legitimacy and effectiveness. They are also probably best in class across the system for their work in exploring how the police can better manage and use data to predict demand on them, which will be a large part of the future of policing, and we are supporting them actively in that, with significant investment over recent years. I congratulate the leadership of the force and its officers on their leadership in that area and their achievement in being rated good across all pillars of Her Majesty’s independent inspection regime.
I acknowledge the points that my hon. Friend has made, which will have been noted in Somerset at the top of the force and by the police and crime commissioner, and I close, as he did, by commending the work of frontline officers across Avon and Somerset for the excellent work they do under extremely demanding circumstances.
Question put and agreed to.