On Monday there was a series of so called ‘topical questions’ aimed at the Home Office Ministers in the House of Commons. These covered a wide range of topics, one of which was the funding of police services. It began with a ‘question’ from Alex Burghart who is the MP for Brentwood and Ongar “Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Essex police, fire and crime commissioner, Roger Hirst, who has used precept powers to increase the number of frontline police officers in Essex by 150?” The response which came from Amber Rudd was “I welcome the action of my hon. Friend’s police and crime commissioner. PCCs have been given powers to raise additional funds, if they want to do so, to provide extra policemen and women on the frontline, and most are choosing to do that.”

As I wrote in this blog on 10th April in Sussex every resident received a leaflet with their Council Tax Bill that explained “the Government is clear that local communities are expected to meet an increasing proportion of policing costs. This is why they have allowed PCCs to increase the police precept.” This means that the Government has decided to shift the funding of policing services so that as they have severely cut the policing grant from central Government, they are encouraging PCCs to make up a small amount of the gap by increasing local taxation. However the Government has not reduced the sums collected through national taxation, even though they have made major cuts to frontline services such as police forces and local Government.

It is disappointing that our Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd is prepared to agree with another Conservative MP and for them both to acknowledge the decision taken by a Conservative PCC to raise the local taxes of the residents of Essex, as if this is the whole picture. Surely it is the residents of Essex who Amber Rudd should be thanking, not her political chums? Because these topical questions are not just organised for the Conservatives to pat each other on the back a Labour MP then stood up. His question was intended to point out that raising local taxes up to the limit set by the Government was not sufficient for funding policing, given the cuts made by the Government over the last eight years. Amber Rudd responded with the following comment:

“We have made it very clear that we will run an efficient Government, particularly in respect of public procurement, to ensure that we have the funds to support our public services. As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is not just about police numbers.”

Now to be fair no one within the police service would argue that numbers will solve everything, but most would question the efficiency of the Government and their willingness to agree with Tory MPs as they applaud their local Tory PCCs for raising local taxes whilst acting as though policing numbers do not matter when challenged by Labour MPs. Just to show that the Essex situation was not an isolated case, the MP for Bexhill and Battle, Huw Merriman then got up and asked another ‘topical question’:

HM: “Will the Home Secretary welcome the additional 200 police officers who are being recruited and deployed by Sussex police in her Hastings and Rye constituency and mine of Bexhill and Battle?”

AR: “Yes, this is good news. The police and crime commissioner for Sussex, the excellent Katy Bourne, has told us that she will be recruiting 200 officers this year and 200 the following year. Kent has said the same, and I understand there will be another 1,000 officers in London.”

Perhaps the only strange element of this final comment was that a London Labour Mayor was referred to albeit without mentioning him by name. After all both the Sussex and Kent PCCs are Tories. No doubt one of the reasons why Amber was so grateful to Katy Bourne was because on Saturday when Amber was in Rye at a public event, Katy was in charge of a team of people, campaigning for Tory votes in Ambers constituency!