Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to make the police more efficient and better resourced.

In recent years, this Government has committed substantial funding to invest in policing and reduce crime. We are on track to recruit 20,000 additional officers by the end of this month, taking us for the first time to over 148,400 officers across England and Wales. This will be the highest number of officers in post on record.

Police, like all public services, should ensure they make the best use of public money:

• The Government has confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £17.2 billion in 2023/24, an increase of up to £313.8 million when compared to 2022/23.

• This settlement is on the basis that the policing sector delivers efficiency savings from force budgets by 2024/25. These will be delivered through improvements in areas including commercial and procurement practices, as well as corporate functions.

• This includes the role of BlueLight Commercial - a sector-owned company - set up to provide commercial expertise and assistance to policing and assist forces in identifying and making efficiency savings. In 2021/22 the company assisted policing in make efficiency savings of almost £40 million (including cashable savings of £24.8 million and non-cashable savings of £14.8 million).

• The Home Secretary has asked the NPCC to undertake a Review into the Operational Productivity of Policing to improve understanding of effectiveness, identifying the barriers to productivity, and the most efficient operating models. This includes simplifying the Home Office Counting Rules to free up police time, which could be spent more effectively on preventing and investigating crime and supporting victims.

• The Home Office is also working closely with the police and health sectors, including DHSC, to help reduce pressures on the police caused by mental health incidents, which are taking officer time away from fighting crime.

The Home Office will continue to strive for improvements in police efficiency and work closely with sector representatives to ensure that the police have the resources they need.