Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

1. What progress she has made on reducing the number of illegal small boat crossings in the channel.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

6. What progress she has made on reducing the number of illegal small boat crossings in the channel.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

7. What steps she is taking to reduce the number of migrants crossing the channel illegally.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend’s question is an important one because, as all hon. Members will be well aware, I asked for MOD naval assets and support back in 2020, because no Department can resolve the complex issue of channel crossings on its own. It is also right, having called for MOD involvement, that we now bring the whole machinery of government, the ultimate utility, together to ensure that we work collectively to protect our borders. My right hon. Friend is right about the wider issues on immigration, and that is why we have the new plan for immigration.

[Andrew Selous]

I fully echo the Home Secretary’s remarks about the late Member for Birmingham, Erdington. He was well liked and respected by many of us on this side of the House.

Does the Home Secretary recognise the anger felt about this issue, not least by the many people who fully respect this country’s proud tradition of asylum and the tremendous contribution made so many people who have come to this country legally?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I pay tribute to all elected representatives across the United Kingdom, because they conduct themselves with great determination day in, day out, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that work is taking place through the Cabinet Office to look at the right kinds of measures and support.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T4. I echo every comment made about Sir David Amess and James Brokenshire. The introduction in 2004 of damping to the police funding formula has cost Bedfordshire about 95 officers on the beat. Will the Government commit to scrap damping as quickly as possible, to be fair to Bedfordshire and the other forces affected?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have made a commitment in this House before that we will introduce a new funding formula for police forces across the land before the next election. That is the objective we are currently working towards, although I would warn everybody that all cannot have prizes.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Andrew Selous Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]]

I strongly support the points about pet theft made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). As Second Church Estates Commissioner, I also strongly welcome the addition of faith leaders alongside sports coaches, both of which have been added to the list of professions in the Bill—that also includes teachers, social workers and doctors—for whom it is illegal to have a sexual relationship with a 16 or 17-year-old in their care. This is in line with the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, and it is absolutely right.

I want to spend the rest of my remarks giving voice to the everyday experiences of one of my female constituents in her early 20s. The cumulative impact of these incidents amounts to very serious and wholly unacceptable antisocial behaviour of the very worst kind, which can lead to a severe lack of self-confidence and wellbeing.

Over the last year or so, my constituent has told me that she has endured: being touched inappropriately and called a prostitute by a strange man on her own doorstep; being continually cat-called while walking down the street; being groped without consent in a nightclub; being cat-called in a seriously offensive manner from the street while fully dressed in her own property; being harassed by a group of men in a pub; having her bottom commented on by an older man while filling her car up with petrol; having her figure loudly commented on by three boys while on the underground, with no one else in the carriage asking them to stop; being followed by a much older man in an unwanted manner over coffee after a church service; and having a man lie to her about his singleness, when he was married and asking her to meet under false pretences. If a young woman in today’s society is not free from sexual harassment in her own home, in public, in a pub, in a nightclub, at a petrol station, on public transport or after a church service, where indeed is she safe?

The tragedy is that these experiences are all too common for many younger women, and it is vital that male Members of Parliament call them out. Although there is so much that we properly expect of the law, the police and the courts, they cannot change a whole culture on their own. That is where our common community life, our families, and indeed every single one of us, has a role. It is up to all of us to set a culture to uphold the values of decency, respect and honouring women that should be commonplace. In particular, it is up to all of us—especially men—to challenge the unacceptable behaviour of other men. The behaviour that I described earlier is not manly anyway; it is cowardly, bullying, pathetic and wrong.

Policing (England and Wales)

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]]

I would like to begin by thanking Bedfordshire police officers and staff for the magnificent job they do in keeping my constituents safe. I also register my disgust at those people who spit and cough over police officers, or indeed attack or try to harm them in any way.

Keeping the public safe is the highest duty of any Government. When I was first elected to Parliament in 2001, I campaigned on a platform to restore the 88 police officers who had recently been lost at the force. In 2005, I stood on a platform of recruiting an extra 5,000 police officers. Only just over a year ago, this Government were elected on a pledge to recruit 20,000 more officers, and we are making good progress on that target, with Bedfordshire having already received an additional 54 officers from that funding, and now having more officers than ever before, at 1,257. Back in 2017-18, Bedfordshire police had a budget of £102.2 million. For 2021-22, it will be £127.4 million—an increase of 25% during a four-year period. It would therefore be wrong for me not to recognise that significant uplift and thank the Government for it.

Over this five-year period, the force has made savings of £13.5 million, showing that we have also focused on efficiency and value for money. However, if we examine the budget more carefully from 1 April 2018 to the end of next month, it will be seen that the £0.4 million underspend in 2018, the £1 million underspend in 2019 and the break-even financial position for this financial year were only achieved as a result of additional special grants for the guns and gangs team of £4.4 million, £3 million and a further £3 million respectively. In other words, without those additional special grants, the force would have been £9 million overspent in the past three financial years. This is not sustainable. Indeed, anything that cannot be done for the long term is not sustainable. Those special grants cannot be relied on in the way that core funding can. What happens if they are suddenly withdrawn? That is not a secure and prudent basis on which to employ police officers.

The problems with Bedfordshire police’s budget go back to 2004, when damping was brought in. That meant that a number of police forces, including Bedfordshire, did not receive the full amount of funding that the national police funding formula said they should. In Bedfordshire’s case, the shortfall was around £3 million a year, which was the equivalent of employing around 95 police officers. It is not an accident that of the five Bedfordshire Members of Parliament who could speak in this debate, three are doing so. We have always worked in a cross-party way on this for the good of the whole county, and I have met every Police Minister to raise this issue since I was first elected in 2001.

Bedfordshire police is the best-represented police force in this debate because of the severity and profile of crime across Bedfordshire. If a school had a 25% increase in funding over four years, we might think that was a very good result. If the number of children in the school increased by 50%, however, we might take a different view. Budgets must be looked at in relation to what they have to be used for. Let me spell out the severity and profile of crime in Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire police manages more organised criminal groups than do Norfolk and Suffolk combined. It manages 12 organised criminal groups involved with firearms, which is more than Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and Hertfordshire combined. The police force also manages 18 identified county lines, and it ranks fourth nationally in relation to county lines, surpassed only by the Metropolitan police, West Midlands police and Greater Manchester police, in that order. In proportion to its population, Bedfordshire police force is not funded in anything like the same way as those three police forces. The issue of county lines in Bedfordshire concerns residents in the areas covered by the Metropolitan police, West Midlands police, Greater Manchester police and even Avon and Somerset police, because Bedfordshire supplies drugs to all those areas. Overall, the supply of drugs out of the county is the fourth highest in England and Wales.

All that was true before the infiltration of the EncroChat server by European law enforcement agencies in Operation Venetic. Bedfordshire police have been allocated 26 separate packages of intelligence about criminality through Operation Venetic. That compares with only 11 packages for Hertfordshire —a police force area three times the size of Bedfordshire—and no packages at all for Cambridgeshire, a county with roughly the same population as Bedfordshire. It is absolutely right that Bedfordshire police should devote resources to tackling crime that is uncovered through that intelligence, but doing so is not cheap and it comes at a significant cost in police officers and budget. That has led to a lack of resilience within Bedfordshire police, and it places the force in a difficult position. I note with great concern, for example, that one recent investigation undertaken by the child and vulnerable adult abuse team took three years to reach a successful conclusion. The result was, of course, a good one, but the conclusion could have been reached within a year. The 11 vulnerable survivors were therefore exposed to horrific crimes for two years longer than should have been the case.

The impact of all that in Bedfordshire is that our police resources get concentrated on our two largest urban centres. That dates back to a change made in October 2012, a month before the very first police and crime commissioner election, and it means that there is not an even distribution of police officers across the whole county. Understandably, the chief constable will place his resource where it is most needed, but that leaves many areas of the county with significantly less police presence than they used to have—and less than people have a right to expect, given that they pay increasing taxes and police precept for police presence in their area.

Let me illustrate that by looking at the police establishment that my largest town, Leighton Buzzard, had in 1988. Back then the town had its own police station, with 12 civilian staff, one inspector, six sergeants and 27 constables. That is a total of 34 warranted officers based in the town. There was also a 24/7 first responder presence, which is something that I want to see in all three of my towns. Other police forces in towns of a similar size with similar budgets do manage to achieve this, but they are not dealing with the crime profile in Bedfordshire.

Today, Leighton Buzzard and Linslade have eight police constables and three PCSOs operating out of the shared services site. There is also a reduced police presence in Dunstable and Houghton Regis. Many years ago, the villages in my constituency had police officers living in police houses. That has all gone, and some residents in my villages live in fear that the police will not be able to get to them in time. This has had very serious consequences indeed for some of my constituents and for a number of local businesses. There have been major incidents of modern slavery on some local Traveller sites, and 100 officers from two neighbouring forces, in addition to Bedfordshire, were required to police one Traveller funeral. That is a great deal of police resource that is not available to the rest of the county to undertake covid-19 enforcement and to respond to all manner of crime. There has also been a very large police presence at at least three other Traveller funerals.

Although we are grateful for the increased budgets and the increasing number of police officers, the resources need to be equal to the challenges they face. The Government need to be fair about the challenges facing Bedfordshire police. My constituents expect no less. Successive Governments of all political parties have continually failed to recognise the challenges facing Bedfordshire. That needs to change and it needs to do so on a sustainable basis, so that the force can plan for the long term based on its core budget and does not have to hope that it will continue to receive one-off special grants, which are not a sustainable basis to plan for the long term. The Minister said in his opening remarks that he would continue to monitor the demands on police forces. That monitoring needs to be improved, and to lead to action and change as far as Bedfordshire is concerned.

Serious Violence

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

When I met the hon. Lady, we had the opportunity to discuss these issues, and I hope she will allow me to progress through my remarks and answer precisely that question.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Members of the Youth Parliament representing Central Bedfordshire are campaigning to make young people aware that a person is in much more danger if they carry a knife. It does not protect them. How can the Government help these excellent Members of the Youth Parliament get the message out to other people that they are much less safe if they stupidly carry a knife?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One way the Government are trying to get that message out is through the #knifefree campaign, which I will come to in a moment.

From having all these conversations and meeting people, including the families of victims of knife crime, one message is loud and clear: there is no one single solution to stopping serious violence. To tackle it properly will require action on many fronts and joined-up action across Government. With our serious violence strategy, we are fighting on all fronts with all partners to try to stop this senseless violence. Our united approach is starting to see some progress. National crime statistics for the last year show that the rate of rise in knife crime is starting to slow. The most recent figures from the Metropolitan police show a fall in the number of homicides in the past 12 months, and the number of knife injuries among under-25s fell by 15% in the capital, with over 300 fewer young people being stabbed, but still far too many lives are being lost and I remain resolute in my mission to help end the bloodshed.

Allow me Mr Speaker, to update the House on some of the work that is already under way. First, we are empowering police to respond to serious violence. I have joined anti-knife crime patrols and met senior officers from the worst-affected areas. They are the experts, so I have listened to what they say they need. They told me they needed more resources, so we have increased police funding by almost £1 billion this year, including council tax. As a result, police and crime commissioners are already planning to recruit about 3,500 extra officers and police staff.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

More money is going into policing, including in Cumbria, and more police officers are being recruited, including in Cumbria. Cumbria constabulary is rated good for efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will join me in congratulating its hard-working officers on achieving that.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

While welcoming the increased officer numbers and police funding that were announced recently, does the Minister share my concern that towns such as Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard have far fewer officers than they had many years ago? This needs to be urgently addressed in the spending review, as it is the first duty of a Government to keep their citizens safe.

Modern Slavery and Victim Support

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who chairs the all-party group. I have the honour of being one of his vice-chairs, and if I may say so, he does a very good job indeed in leading the group.

William Wilberforce was and remains one of my heroes and inspirations for coming into politics. As my right hon. Friend said, it is unbelievable that the practice that Wilberforce campaigned against so forcefully, over 40 years, all those centuries ago is still so prevalent today. I believe in social justice, and this could not be a more significant social justice issue, as the chair of the all-party group so powerfully said.

I have worked with many non-governmental organisations in this space. I shall mention just a few: the International Justice Mission, Hope for Justice, STOP THE TRAFFIK and the A21 Campaign. There are many others. If there are some organisations represented behind me in the Public Gallery that I have not mentioned, they should consider themselves praised as well. They all do brilliant work and we need every single one of them in this fight.

This issue got a little more real for me when in leafy south Bedfordshire, in a wonderful village in my constituency one Sunday morning, 200 police officers went on to a Traveller site and liberated 24 victims of modern slavery, 19 of whom were British, just to follow up the point made by the chair of the all-party group. What was even worse was that the same thing happened again on that site on two subsequent occasions. We are here this morning to stop re-trafficking. In my constituency, I have had that example of where this has happened again and again on the same site. That is not something that any of us should stand for.

I declare a slight family interest, in that my daughter Camilla is doing sterling work, as a medical student, to explain to other clinicians the role of the national health service in spotting victims of modern slavery in order to bring it to an end. That is so important and I will explain why. A few years ago the all-party group met a young English learning disabled man who had been kept as a slave on a Traveller site in Wales. He broke his leg during that time and was taken to a hospital in Wales. No one spotted that he had no English family with him. Irish Travellers were dealing with his care; they got him in and got him out and did not take him back for any of his physiotherapy. He was then held prisoner, effectively, as a slave, for many more years. We met his parent in the all-party group, and one thing that they asked for was that national insurance contributions for his time in slavery be credited to him so that he did not lose out on his state pension. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister might update us on that issue; I have mentioned it to her before. I think that she was battling with the Treasury on it and perhaps she will have good news for us later. What happened to that young man was a disgrace.

That goes to the heart of the debate. It is about stopping people being re-trafficked, whether the same thing is being done again and again just at one site, as happened in my constituency, or whether the wonderful clinicians and other people—the doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants—who work in our NHS are failing to take an opportunity to spot that someone is a victim of modern slavery. That is why this issue matters so much.

[Maggie Throup]

My hon. Friend talks about medics having a responsibility, but we, too, have a responsibility. I am sure that many of us unwittingly go to car washes and nail bars where there are undoubtedly victims of slavery. We need to be more aware of that and get that message out.

[Andrew Selous]

I go to more car washes than nail bars, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Actually, I can think of one place that I go to and I feel guilty that I have not yet checked what is happening there. I think that there is a campaign—perhaps other hon. Members will speak about it—whereby we can check; I think that there is some sort of certification scheme. It would be a good thing for all of us to make those checks.

I think that we will get more prosecutions if we have a longer period of safety for people. I note that England and Wales are behind Scotland and Northern Ireland. As a proud Englishman as well as a proud Brit, I am not happy with that; I want us to be among the best in this country. I note the comments of the National Audit Office, which are sensible and measured. It is looking across Government and looking at what works and at value for money for the taxpayer. The NAO wants change. There is also the Crown Prosecution Service and the cross-party Select Committee on Work and Pensions; all are making the same points.

It strikes me that we have a proud tradition of giving asylum in this country, and rightly so—it is part of what makes us civilised—and asylum is given on the basis of a well-founded fear of persecution, but for the people we are discussing, it is not a case of a well-founded fear; they are actual victims. They have actually suffered persecution; there is not a fear that it might happen. Of course, for some asylum seekers, it has also already happened. Why do we treat victims of modern slavery, who have been persecuted, worse than asylum seekers who have a well-justified fear? Of course, giving asylum is the right thing to do, as I said, for asylum seekers. We know that the individuals we are discussing today cannot self-refer; they will go through all the proper immigration procedures.

I was pleased to see, in the Free for Good briefing that we were sent, that there is an onus on the home countries of foreign victims of modern slavery to do their bit to provide a safe, independent future for those victims in their home countries. That may not be possible for everyone, but we should put pressure on some of the home countries, whether it be Nigeria, Vietnam or wherever. Perhaps people need a new identity. Perhaps they need help to move back to a different part of their home country so that they are safe there as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has helped the review with his expertise. I cannot recall the date off the top of my head, but we have been considering the interim reports as they have been published. We do not want to rush; we want to get it right. Alongside the work on the statutory guidance we are drafting, I am clear that we want a response in good time. We are not going to hang around, but we want to get it right. I very much want to publish it, because Members will want to look at our response.

I must thank the reviewers—the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and Baroness Butler-Sloss—and the secretariat for their work in formulating the reports, which have been incredibly thoughtful and focused in their recommendations. I am considering each interim report. I do not know whether the reviewers want to tie all the reports into one big report at the end, but we will be responding soon.

We are conscious of the responsibilities to ensure that the next victim care contract meets the expectations of everyone involved in tackling modern slavery. It will include landmark reforms such as places of safety, which will provide up to three days of immediate support to victims rescued out of a situation of exploitation by law enforcement. It will include an inspection regime for safe houses. We are working with the Care Quality Commission to develop that, and it will be underpinned by the slavery and trafficking survivor care standards. I am grateful to the sector for its work in drawing that together. In providing support to victims, we must remember that every victim’s journey is different. I visited a safe house recently, and that point was re-emphasised to me by every person and resident I spoke to there.

[Andrew Selous]

I reiterate the question I asked the Minister about the re-crediting of national insurance contributions to British citizens who have been victims of modern slavery so that they do not lose out on a full pension. I understand that she may well not have the answer now, but will she please write to me and place a copy of that letter in the Library of the House to let us know where negotiations with the Treasury have got to on that matter?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. If I may, I will write to him about that. He raises an important point.

In terms of post-NRM support, the new victim care contract will include drop-in services, which victims will be able to access for up to six months after leaving the NRM, and weekly signposting on health and wellbeing services. I am conscious of the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green posed about indefinite leave to remain, but I am afraid that I cannot comment because of the outstanding case going on at the moment. We are piloting new approaches with six local authority areas to identify best practice in such support.

Many colleagues spoke about the perilous situation that child victims find themselves in. County lines are very much a factor in the increase in children being referred into the national referral mechanism. We have rolled out independent child trafficking advocates to one third of all local authorities in England and Wales, in line with the commitment I made in July last year. We have adapted the system to reflect the fact that children of British nationality who are members of county lines often have different needs from children who perhaps do not speak English and have come from overseas.

I am conscious of the time. I very much welcome the findings of the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act on ICTAs, in particular. The recommendations in the report are child-focused. We are considering the recommendations for improvements that we can make to the service. I confirm that the Government are committed to rolling out that important additional support nationally.

Colleagues mentioned prosecuting offenders. Those were important comments, but I make a slight plea. I know that Members will bear with me if I make the observation that one reason why the withdrawal agreement is so important is so that we have the implementation period—[Interruption.] I have to say it. In the implementation period, all our law enforcement partnerships will continue, and that is so important in tackling modern slavery. Apologies to everyone who thought they were going to escape the “B” word.

I am grateful for colleagues’ contributions, and I look forward to continuing to work with them on this important topic.

Knife Crime

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

When I asked the chief constable of Bedfordshire what was driving the increase in knife crime in my county, he mentioned the fact that there were too many homes where there was not a father telling young boys that carrying a knife was wrong. I hugely welcome the 160 extra officers in Bedfordshire this year, but what more can we do to support parents and families to tell all young people that real men do not carry knives and that this an unacceptably evil thing to do?

[Sajid Javid]

I will give my hon. Friend two responses. First, last year, we started our #knifefree campaign, which is about sending messages to young people, on the social media they use and in more traditional advertising, about the dangers of carrying a knife. Secondly, we are working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, through its troubled families programme, to see what more we can do with those families, who are perhaps going through family breakdown or facing other issues, to get across the message that there is never an excuse to carry a knife.

Police Grant Report

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am pleased that the total resources for Bedfordshire police will receive a welcome increase next year to £112.7 million from the current £104.6 million. However, even between rural forces, there is a difference in the ability to raise revenue from band D properties. For example Hertfordshire, which is a neighbouring force, has many more band D properties than Bedfordshire, and that is something of which the Home Office needs to be aware.

It is often said in the House that the Government’s first duty is to defend this country. I would agree with that regarding our wonderful armed services, but I think we would also all agree that that duty to defend also relates to our constituents as they go about their everyday business in their homes and at their places of work.

Because of the way in which Bedfordshire is configured, there are significant issues about how the Bedfordshire police force works for my constituents and for Central Bedfordshire Council—the local authority in the middle of Bedfordshire. There is significant demand on police resourcing in Bedford and in Luton, in particular, which means that the middle part of the county is often extremely challenged. We are also one of 19 police forces to suffer from damping, which was introduced by Labour in 2004. In 2015, this Government had the courage to state that that was unfair. They tried to look at revising the national police funding formula to reverse the unfair impact of damping, which affects 18 forces along with Bedfordshire. In Bedfordshire’s case, that means a loss of about 90 officers a year—about £3.3 million of funding that we have lost every year since 2004. I would expect that issue to be dealt with as we look forward to next year’s comprehensive spending review, which the Home Secretary quite rightly pointed to. There is good news on this year’s funding, but still more work to do regarding next year’s very important comprehensive spending review.

I am struck by the fact that the police are less local than they used to be. Many years ago, there would be police officers living in individual villages in my constituency. Up until 1 October 2012, there were fully-functioning, 24/7 first responder police stations in Leighton Buzzard and in Dunstable. I want to restore that state of affairs. We have had incidences of shoplifting in our supermarkets, handbags being stolen from ladies outside nightclubs and bicycles being stolen from children, and when my constituents have rung the police, no one has been available. We also have issues with county lines operations —drug gangs coming up from London or down from Birmingham—which have had a significant impact on Bedfordshire police.

As has been said, we ask the police to do too much, particularly with regard to mental health. A failure to regulate children’s homes properly puts significant extra burdens on police resources when the police have to find children who have run away. The owners of those homes should be doing much more and should be far more responsible. I will shortly be taking that issue up with a Minister in the Department for Education. Significant challenges to policing and to law and order arise from the prevalence of Traveller sites in my constituency. We have had three major incidences of modern slavery—this is all a matter of public record and fact—and considerable extra demands are placed on Bedfordshire police as a result.

The chief constable wrote to me recently to say that on Sunday 16 September last year, the force literally ran out of officers as it had to deal with seven teenagers being stabbed in Luton, four rapes, five prison officers being assaulted in Bedford prison, a fatality in a road traffic incident, a 16-year-old being murdered in Bedford, and people with gunshot wounds coming into the accident and emergency department of Luton and Dunstable Hospital. That was a particularly demanding Sunday, but such demand is not unusual in Bedfordshire.

We should look at what the previous Mayor of London did through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime when he identified the MOPAC 7, which were the seven crimes of most concern to the public: burglary, vandalism, criminal damage, theft from motor vehicles, theft of motor vehicles, violence with injury, and theft from the person. He focused on driving down those seven areas of crime, and that was successful. If we could relieve the police of some additional duties—perhaps regarding mental health and children’s homes—that are not properly their responsibility, they could go back to those seven really important areas.

We need to think about what builds law-abiding communities. Cicero said in 52 BC: “We have a natural propensity to love our fellow men, and that, after all, is the foundation of all law.”

Police Funding Settlement

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I do not accept that last statement, because that is a grotesque exaggeration of the situation. The West Midlands police force is an extremely important police force in the system, with a proud history of innovation. Funding—public investment—in that system increased by £10 million this year. This settlement enables the police and crime commissioner to increase public investment by up to £34 million, of which £16 million will come from central Government grants. The west midlands has, I think, an above average number of police officers per head of population, compared with the national average, and broadly the national average in terms of crime recorded by police officers, but it is a stretched police force. I absolutely understand that and I see this settlement as another important milestone on the journey towards the next comprehensive spending review, which is the most important event in shaping police funding for the next few years.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

As someone who has campaigned vociferously on behalf of Bedfordshire police, I say thank you for enabling Bedfordshire to raise an extra £8 million next year, which is very welcome indeed. Does the Policing Minister share my outrage at the escalation in the theft of tools from vans? We have just had Small Business Saturday. Someone who steals tools from a work person’s van takes their livelihood. I am concerned that the police might not take that crime as seriously as I think they should. Does he share my concern about that particular issue?

[Mr Hurd]

I do share that concern, because I absolutely understand the economic impact on that small business trade, and I would expect the police to take that crime seriously. This is an opportunity for me to place on record again my admiration for and thanks to my hon. Friend for his tenacity in advocating for increased funding for Bedfordshire police. I hope that he is pleased about the exceptional grant that I announced a few months ago and that he will welcome a settlement that has the potential to increase funding into Bedfordshire police by up to £8 million next year.