Police Grant Report
Debate between Sarah Jones and Mark Pritchard(1 week ago)
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Sarah Jones
Of course, policing itself is devolved, but addressing the risk of terrorism involves working across the whole of the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Security Minister will ensure we are working very closely across all four parts of this United Kingdom to offer the support that is needed.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
As the Policing Minister knows, West Mercia police—which covers Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire—is a very good force in many ways. However, is she aware that West Mercia is about to see the first fall in police numbers in over a decade, with approximately 20 frontline police officers likely to be removed as a result of what the local police and crime commissioner calls a “shortfall in Government funding”, and that this will affect The Wrekin constituency?
Sarah Jones
To repeat, every force in the country has had an increase in its funding this year, and we are making sure we have the right funding to support our objectives. On police officer numbers, what we saw under the last Government was a reduction of 20,000 officers and then a rush to recruit 20,000. The result was, for example, a 60% rise in retail crime in the last two years of the Conservative Government—that arbitrary focus on numbers did not result in the right outcomes. We are interested in police outcomes. We are interested in driving down crime and preventing it, and we believe that we should give our chiefs the flexibility to understand what roles they need within their local workforce. Police staff are exceptionally important in many different roles.
Under the last Government, the number of PCSOs halved. That was not even Government policy; it just happened because they did not have a proper workforce plan and did not think about these things, and then in the latter years they did not allow flexibility for local officers. We believe chiefs can make the right decisions about their workforce locally, and for the first time—the Conservatives failed to do this—we will establish a national workforce plan, to make sure we have the right resources in the right places at the right time.
Sarah Jones
I suggest that we carry on that conversation over a cup of coffee another time.
We are also investing £1.4 billion in the wider policing system to continue our progress on adopting modern, cutting-edge technologies that will better enable the police to perform their most critical function of keeping the public safe. The Government are supporting the police in their ongoing fight against knife crime by maintaining funding for serious violence reduction activity in every force area. Alongside that, there is £28 million, through our county lines programme, to disrupt organised crime and protect vulnerable and exploited children. A total of £119 million will go towards our ambitious programme of police reform, in which we will establish a new national centre to support the use of artificial intelligence across policing, enable the national roll-out of live facial recognition and strengthen the way that data is used to support operational policing.
Mark Pritchard
The Minister is being very generous with her time, as she always is. I hope that she will also be generous in her reply. AI is already playing a part in policing, and I would hope that everybody who wants crime reduced supports that, but as far as I am concerned, that support comes with caveats. There needs to be legislative oversight to ensure that AI is regulated and not abused. When will the Government come forward with the legislation that was mentioned by the Home Secretary? Just very briefly on police reform, does she recognise that West Mercia oversees a rural and semi-rural area? In any reconfiguration, restructuring should recognise the unique challenges of rural police forces, as opposed to, let us say, those of the neighbouring force, West Midlands.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the two points that he raised in one question. On AI, he is absolutely right that we need to ensure—I hope this is now the policy of the Opposition; it was not when they were in government—that there is an understanding of what AI is and is not used for. Importantly, we are consulting on how live facial recognition is and is not used. On AI, a huge amount of work is going on in different police forces, and most areas have ethics committees and other such structures that consider and talk about the use of AI. For example, there are certain rules around the use of AI. It should never be used to make a decision or to pass a judgment; it should be just for giving information. That is very important. We saw in the recent West Midlands case how easy it is to end up making a mistake, and we want to avoid that.
On the reform point, we are baking into our structures the idea that, at the hyper-local level, everybody in the ward will have a named, contactable officer, and that there will be targets for 999 response times, 999 call-answering times, and response times for non-urgent calls. I have heard from several MPs that rural areas are concerned that where there is a larger force, they will get fewer resources. That is not the intention—indeed, it is quite the opposite. Instead of having 43 forces making 43 decisions, and 86 decision makers spending money in 43 different ways, we will make savings that will mean that we can put more money into frontline policing in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Energy Prices: Energy-intensive Industries
Debate between Sarah Jones and Mark Pritchard(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sarah Jones
We are obviously keen to do what we can to support the Scottish whisky industry. I have been to see it and understand how important it is. The definitions of energy-intensive industries were developed under the previous Government, and we have no immediate plans to change those, but I will take away the right hon. Gentleman’s point and look into it.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
On net zero, I think there is a national consensus on making the environment better, creating green jobs and improving energy security, but will the Minister recognise that for many people, consumers and companies out there—particularly small businesses, by the way; it is not all about large ones—there is too much happening, too soon and too fast? Rather than having regressive and punitive taxes on industry and small businesses, there should be more education and more incentives to change consumer and company behaviour.
Sarah Jones
The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. We have a national consensus that we need to act, and I think the population are with us on that. They understand that we need to make sure we have a planet for our children and our grandchildren and that we need to do everything we can. As was said this week, we want to tread lightly on people’s lives, and of course we do not want to inflict regressive and punitive taxation. We want to make sure we are supporting industry and business, and we are looking at how we can help to incentivise the changes that we need to see.