Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Toby Perkins and Lord Herbert of South Downs(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
In the interest of transparency, will the Minister consider adding to the value of the mapping crimes website by including figures on the dozens of police who will not be on the streets because of the huge cuts his Government are imposing on our police forces?
Nick Herbert
Oh dear, the hon. Gentleman has missed the point. If he looks at the website police.uk, he will see that the neighbourhood policing teams are shown alongside the area in which the individual lives. Every force up and down the country is committed to protecting neighbourhood policing, and those officers will remain on the streets for the public as savings are made in the back and middle offices.
Crime and Policing
Debate between Toby Perkins and Lord Herbert of South Downs(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
The right hon. Lady has not understood the new world, has she? We want to move beyond targets. We do not believe that public services are improved by the targets of which she was so fond.
That issue was reflected in the second group of speeches, which called for more spending. Never mind that we spend £14 billion a year on the police—50% more over the lifetime of the last Government. These speeches—not least the right hon. Lady’s—called for more authoritarianism. Never mind about civil liberties: to hell with those, and who cares about the deficit? That was the substance of the shadow Home Secretary’s case.
Nick Herbert
No, I will not.
The shadow Home Secretary said that we should not cut, that we should not make any savings in respect of the police and that we should protect the police, but take no action to protect civil liberties or reform police accountability. That was his contention. Let us deal with those matters in turn.
In his winding-up speech, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said that the Opposition would have maintained resources for policing, while the Opposition motion says that the previous Government would have maintained core funding. Yet, on 20 July, on “The Daily Politics” in a debate with me, the shadow Home Secretary said that his Government would have cut by “£1 billion a year”—a cut of 12%. There was the admission that they would have cut spending. Now, however, they say that they would have maintained resources. They do not know what they would have done, but we know what they would have done.