Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in praising the fire and other services taking part in this difficult endeavour. As he knows, there are well tried and tested procedures to make sure that central Government stand behind local government when there are excessive costs. I will happily write to my hon. Friend about that issue.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister tell us how many experienced police officers are being forcibly retired as a result of his 20% cuts to police budgets?

[The Prime Minister]

The decisions about police officer numbers will depend on the decisions made by chief constables in individual parts of the country. The point is that we can see in case after case that there are far too many police officers in back-office jobs, doing paperwork and carrying out corporate development work who should be on the front line. Responsible chief constables are getting those officers out on the front line to fight crime—and crime is falling under this Government.

[Edward Miliband]

I do not know whether the Prime Minister does not know the answer to the question or whether he chooses not to answer it. Let me tell him the answer: 2,100 experienced police officers with more than 30 years’ experience are being forcibly retired. Let us take the case of former beat officer, Martin Heard, who was forced to retire from Wolverhampton police. He is now being asked to come back to the force as a volunteer special constable—unpaid—to fill the gaps left by the cuts. What does the Prime Minister have to say to Martin Heard?

[The Prime Minister]

What is absolutely clear is that what we are getting from the Labour party is complete and utter hypocrisy. We know at the time of the last election that Labour was specifically asked, and I quote the interview:

“Can you guarantee if you form the next government that police numbers won’t fall?”

The Home Affairs spokesman at the time, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), said “No”, he could not guarantee that. The question is not whether the budget should be reduced—of course it has to be—but who is going to cut the paperwork, who is going to get rid of the bureaucracy, who is going to trust the local managers to make sure we get police on the front line. Those are steps we are taking; those are steps his Government never took.

[Edward Miliband]

He is the guy who came along and said that cuts not of 12% but of 20% were necessary for efficiency savings in the police budget. It is his choice; why does he not defend it? Perhaps one reason people are so angry is that a year ago the Prime Minister said on the eve of the election:

“Any cabinet minister who comes to me…and says ‘Here are my plans’ and they involve frontline reductions, they’ll be sent”

packing. What does he say to the Home Secretary about cases such as that of Martin Heard—or has he just broken another promise?

[The Prime Minister]

What the Home Secretary is doing is what police leaders up and down the country are doing: trying to get more police on the beat. In my own force in the Thames valley, that is exactly what is happening.

When it comes to defending front-line services, is it not time that the right hon. Gentleman talked to Labour local authorities such as Manchester city council, which, although the average cut in local government spending power is just 4.5%, is cutting services by 25%? Are not Labour local authorities playing politics with people’s jobs?

[Edward Miliband]

The Prime Minister knows that he cannot defend his broken promises on policing. Let us talk about the other broken promises led by the Deputy Prime Minister. We know that the majority of universities are proposing to charge tuition fees of £9,000 a year. Can the Prime Minister tell us how many of them he expects to have their proposed fees cut by the Office for Fair Access?

[The Prime Minister]

That decision will depend on the Office for Fair Access.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about broken promises. The fact is that it was the last Government who introduced tuition fees and top-up fees—but we have a new doctrine on the leader of the Labour party’s attitude to the last Government, which he announced in an interview with The Sun. He said:

“I am not going to defend what happened in the past just because I happen to have been in the last Government.”

Presumably we should not listen to him now just because he happens to be the Leader of the Opposition.

[Edward Miliband]

Once again, the Prime Minister has not answered the question. We know from the Office for Fair Access that it is not going to cut the fees of the universities. The assistant director said at the weekend:

“We are not a free pricing regulator: that is not our role...we wouldn’t say to an institution we would only allow a fee of ‘X’ or ‘Y’.”

Will not the Prime Minister admit that on top of a broken promise not to raise tuition fees and a broken promise that £9,000 would be the exception, he is now breaking another promise on the capping of excessive fees?

[The Prime Minister]

The fact is that we will have to wait until July, when the access regulator—[Interruption.] Let me make this point to the right hon. Gentleman. Degrees have not suddenly started to cost £7,000, £8,000 or £9,000. Degrees have always cost that much. The question is, who will pay for them? We say that successful graduates earning more than £21,000 a year should pay for them rather than taxpayers, many of whom do not go to university.

I have to say this to the right hon. Gentleman. He made a promise: a promise that he would have a fully costed alternative to our fees programme by the end of the last year. Where is it? Another broken promise!

[Edward Miliband]

That is what we have come to expect from this Prime Minister. He is hazy on the facts, and unable to give a straight answer to a straight question. I know how the Energy Secretary must have felt in Cabinet yesterday. Remember what was said a year ago about two parties working

“Together in the national interest”?

Now what do we have? We have two parties threatening to sue each other in their own interests. That is what has changed in the last year.

What the public are saying, in relation to police cuts, tuition fees and the NHS, is “This is not what we voted for.” Given that the Government have broken so many of the promises that they made a year ago, how can the public believe anything that they say at the elections tomorrow?

[The Prime Minister]

Even the jokes have been bad this week. The fact is that what this coalition Government have done over the past year is freeze council tax, cap immigration, lift a million people out of income tax, introduce a pupil premium, link the pension back to earnings, cut corporation tax, and set up more academies in 10 months than the last Government set up in 10 years. At the council elections tomorrow, people should remember the mess that Labour left us in, and resolve not to let Labour do to their councils what it did to our country. [Interruption.]