David Crausby
Main Page: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)Department Debates - View all David Crausby's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Green
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The higher the quality of the initial decision making, the fewer resources of money and people will be needed later. Part of the reason for having the new technology—new ways of applying for visas, for example —is that we will be able to use senior and more experienced staff to take the initial decisions, so that more of them can be got right first time.
Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)
16. What estimate she has made of the number of police officers in Bolton (a) on the latest date for which figures are available and (b) at the end of 2014-15.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
Bolton Metropolitan borough division had 527 police officers on 31 March 2010. It is not possible to forecast the position in 2014-15. It is a matter for the chief constable and the police authority to determine the number of police officers and other staff that are deployed to Bolton.
Mr Crausby
Well, the Minister might be in denial about the numbers in 2014, but the rest of us know that under this Government there will be fewer police officers in Bolton in that year than there are now. After all those years in opposition making a case for having more bobbies on the beat, how can this Government retain any credibility without admitting that fewer police officers will mean more crime?
Nick Herbert
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will pay more attention to what the chief constable of the Greater Midlands—[Hon. Members: “Greater Manchester”]—police is saying. I am sorry, I mean the chief constable of the Greater Manchester police. He told The Bolton News that cuts would not affect the front line and went on to say that there was “no reason” why crime should go up. He pointed out to the Home Affairs Committee that some of the force’s headquarters operations had got too big and that some police officer numbers had been kept artificially high. He said that they had lots of police officers doing administrative posts just to hit that number.