Police Reform

Chris Philp Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. The Minister mentioned at the beginning the Government’s plans to bring forward a police reform White Paper. That was announced, from memory, about a year ago, but there has not been a single sniff of that White Paper. Can she tell us when we can expect it and why the Government are so bereft of ideas that they have taken a year or more to publish it?

Today’s statement about police and crime commissioners represents tinkering around the edges from a Government who are failing on crime and policing. They are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This Government are failing. Police numbers are falling. They fell by 1,300 during Labour’s first year in office on a like-for-like, March-to-March comparison. Police numbers are not only continuing to fall, but will drop even more this year. Crime under this Government is surging: shoplifting is up by 13% in this Government’s first year to record levels, leaving shopkeepers in difficulty, and we have seen theft from the person going up by 5% and sexual offences going up by 9%.

If it were not enough to see all those crime types surging under this Labour Government, senior police officers are warning that they face a funding crisis. Indeed, the chief constables of our four largest forces—Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan police—all said publicly just a few months ago that they face a funding crisis under this Labour Government.

It is clear that this Government are failing on police and crime, with falling police numbers, increasing crime and a funding crisis, yet the Policing Minister comes to us today with some minor tinkering around the edges. The Government say that they want to transfer PCC powers to mayors where they exist and where the territories are coterminous. Broadly speaking, that is the approach the previous Government took. In fact, I recall transferring one of the Yorkshire forces, I think, into the mayoral model a year or so ago. She asserts that the mayoral model is superior to regular police and crime commissioners, and I wonder what evidence she can produce to support that, because the biggest police and crime commissioner in the country is the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is also the worst PCC in the country. Knife crime is up 86% under Sadiq Khan, and the Met has the lowest clear-up rate of any force in the country at a lamentable 4.7%. He has closed down half the front counters in London, and police numbers are plummeting. How can the Minister make such an assertion?

For areas outside mayoralties, the Minister proposes essentially to abolish PCCs and replace them with some kind of committee comprised of local councillors. Will those have the same powers as police and crime commissioners? It is implied that they will, and if so, it will not save any money, other than from the election and the police and crime panel, which are very small costs. As far as I can see, this proposal will not save any money, but will remove a directly elected public official—the police and crime commissioner—who is accountable to the public and would certainly be more visible than some faceless committee of local bureaucrats. That is a retrograde step.

In the Government’s announcement today, they are tinkering around the edges. They are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while crimes such as shoplifting rocket, police numbers fall and the police face a funding crisis made in the Home Office.

[Sarah Jones]

I am not sure whether or not the shadow Home Secretary is in favour of this announcement—it is not entirely clear. Perhaps he can come back when he has made up his mind.

The right hon. Gentleman asked several questions that I am happy to reply to. He asked when the White Paper on police reform will come out. It will be this year, I can assure him. We have been working with local police chiefs, police and crime commissioners and the staff associations on what the reform will look like, and we are making the final changes to our reform agenda. As a former Home Office Minister, he will know that we need to make many improvements in respect of performance, accountability, technology, and the structure wherein we have 86 decision makers across the country who, basically, ensure that there are huge inefficiencies in the system while performance and productivity do not rise as fast as they should. Again, I assure him that there will be a significant White Paper that we bring out before the end of the year.

We made the announcement about police and crime commissioners today so that we can continue to work in good faith with the commissioners as we finalise our reform programme. It was right to tell them as soon as we could. I spoke to them at some length this morning, and will speak to them again, not least at their conference next week.

The shadow Home Secretary talks about crime rates. I do not have to remind the House of his and the former Government’s record in office. They cut 20,000 police and recruited 20,000 police, so we now have a police workforce that is very new, large numbers of whom have been in post for only a couple of years. Despite the recruitment done at the end of the Conservatives’ period in government, prosecution rates did not improve. The system is so unproductive, so inefficient and so badly managed that we need to make huge reforms. We have been making progress since we came to power—for example, just a couple of weeks ago, we announced an 18% fall in knife murders, 60,000 knives have been taken off the street, and knife crime has fallen by 5%. We are surging neighbourhood policing capacity, which was decimated under the previous Government, and we will have 3,000 extra police in our neighbourhoods by next April.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the evidence of mayoral success. I encourage him to talk to the mayors and deputy mayors responsible for police and crime. The ability of a mayoral system, with all the public services beneath it working together more collaboratively and more effectively, is clear to see, so I suggest he has a look for himself.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether powers will be transferred to the new models. They were. The new model will not be a faceless committee of local bureaucrats. Its members will be the leaders of the councils and a senior police and crime lead, who will drive the day-to-day work. Accountability will remain, as will the statutory responsibilities. This is an opportunity for us to work across local government and with other partners to make sure that we drive the best possible system.

A saving of £100 million is, I think, quite substantial, not “tinkering around the edges” as the shadow Home Secretary suggests. If he waits a few more weeks, he will see the reform agenda that the Home Secretary is designing in its totality. It will put policing on a much better footing than he left it.