The need for dramatically increased funding for police services is no secret and there are increasing examples of very senior officers who would have previously raised their concerns privately with MPs and Ministers going public as they start to see the seams pulling apart in their organisations. The responses to such demands for more money are becoming increasingly dreadful. Two examples from the last few days are a request to the Home Secretary by Labour MP Jim Cunningham who asked “To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment his Department has made of any correlation between trends in police response times and trends in the number of police officers.” His question was responded to by Nick Hurd the Policing Minister who explained

“The deployment of resources is an operational matter for the police. Before making decisions on the 2018/19 police funding settlement, I spoke to every police force in England and Wales to understand how demands on them were changing.

This year, we have enabled Police and Crime Commissioners to increase their direct funding by £280m through greater flexibility to raise precept. Most PCCs have set out plans to use this additional income to protect or enhance front line policing.”

What I love about this pathetic answer is that it implies that when the Government agrees to allow local taxation to be increased to help put a bit more icing on the cake that is collapsing, that somehow their failure to adequately fund the cake from national taxation will somehow get overlooked as a result of this extra icing. The whole point about local precept is it should be there to enable local wisdom and knowledge to fill the small holes that appear as a result of national funding patterns not fitting the local needs, not that it will try to fill the enormous gaps in front line funding.

Then we have the appalling responses from Nick Hurd and his boss Sajid Javid speaking at this weeks Police Federation conference and both pointing out that they cannot automatically support public pay body recommendations. This is of course true. When people like employers call in independent groups to advise them, they are not bound to take the advice. However when this all happens in public against the backdrop of MPs pay rises on the basis that this is what has been proposed by their own pay body advisers, there is a clear need for the Ministers to make a clear and uncomplicated response which justifies the reason why they are rejecting the advice.

The answer from Nick Hurd to a Sussex Police Federation representative was classic “last year budget holders [presumably he means PCCs and Chief Constables] said a two percent pay increase would have caused them problems so the government compromised by not accepting the recommendations in full” The Government is not meant to compromise on such matters, they are supposed to do so by finding the extra funding and releasing it into the budgets of PCCs and Chief Constables.