Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to increase the police core grant to take account of the role of community policing in local counter terrorism work.

The Government protected overall police spending in the 2015 Spending Review, and the 2017/18 police funding settlement maintains that commitment, with most forces seeing a slight increase in their spending power compared with 2015/16. However, Ministers have begun a programme of engagement with the police to better understand the demands they face, and how these can best be managed.

In parallel, we are reviewing our counter-terrorism arrangements to ensure that we are doing everything possible to address the threat from terrorism and to keep the public safe, drawing on lessons from the attacks in London and Manchester. This review will ensure that the police and the security services have the powers they need and that the prison sentences for those found guilty of terror offences are sufficient to keep us all safe. The findings of this review work will feed into a new counter-terrorism strategy.