Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Department Debates - View all Meg Hillier's debates with the Home Office
Police: Financial Sustainability
Meg Hillier Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
I do agree, and that £460 million includes an additional £8 million for Avon and Somerset, which I know my hon. Friend will welcome. She is entirely right: Avon and Somerset is a superb example of a force that has adapted and innovated. I consider it to be best in class in respect of its smart use of data to manage demand, which means that it has some of the best response time statistics in the system. It provides an example to the rest of the system of how demand can be managed better through a more intelligent use of data, and I congratulate it on that.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The former permanent secretary at the Home Office has acknowledged that the funding formula for policing is ineffective. However, as there has been a delay, it now looks like we will be waiting until the spending review before the new formula is agreed and comes into force. On my calculation that means it will not come into force or make a difference until 2020-21. Can the Minister give us any comfort on that and explain when the funding formula will be properly revisited?
Mr Hurd
I say to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, as I have said publicly, that the appropriate point to address this issue—which is very sensitive and which a number of forces and MPs representing forces feel very strongly about—is in the context of the CSR, which is the most important framework for long-term financial planning in the police. I will be very frank: my priority, working with the Home Secretary, is to make an argument to set the size of the total cake. We have made it clear that we will then need to deliver a compelling analysis and plan for how that cake gets divided up in a way that more fairly reflects the demands on the current policing system, which are evolving. We are very serious about that, but we just happen to think that the CSR is the most appropriate framework in which to do this work.