Sefton Central Labour MP Bill Esterson has branded Conservative funding of the police “dangerous” and slammed Government plans to use an increase in council tax to boost police funding.
The plan is “fundamentally unfair” to more deprived areas that have higher crime rates and makes areas with the greatest need of police support “less safe”, says the MP.
Council tax bills include a police precept, which is used to support police budgets. The police precept for a Band D Property in Sefton last year was £177. This will rise by £24 this year, double the previously allowed increase of £12.
Properties in Band A will see a £16 increase.
Mr Esterson, the MP for Sefton Central, says the plan to increase police funding via the precept gives more affluent areas of the UK an opportunity to increase their funding by proportionally higher amounts than less well off areas, even if they have suffered lower cuts to their central government funding and have lower crime rates.
Merseyside Police has lost £90m of Government funding since 2010. Increasing the police precept will raise £8.9m, so less than 10 percent of the funding lost. Affluent Surrey Police, meanwhile, have lost £34m in government funding since 2010 and will be able to recoup more than a third of that loss, £12m, through raising the police precept by the maximum £24.
Mr Esterson, who is also a Shadow Business Minister, said the plan to use the council tax precept to underpin police funding was ‘perverse’.
He said: “Using council tax to pay for increased funding for the police is perverse, fundamentally unfair and dangerous. Wealthier areas where there are more higher band properties will be able to raise more, and these are often the areas where there is less serious crime.
“Merseyside has seen a 26% increase in violent crime over the last 12 months alone. Hampshire meanwhile has seen a 4% increase. Hampshire will raise £16.5m from increasing their police precept by the maximum, whereas Merseyside can collect less than £9m. How can this be fair or sensible? How is it doing anything other than making those areas in greatest need of police support less safe?”
Merseyside has lost 1,066 officers since 2010, a 24% cut. There have been cuts in central government funding for nine consecutive years.
The total increase this year in central-government funding for local forces amounts to £303m yet government-imposed increases in pension contributions will amount to £311m, meaning a real-term cuts in Conservative funding to local forces.
The National Audit Office found Central Government funding to local forces has been cut by £2.7bn in real terms since 2010 and the precept rise will recoup just a small proportion of that.
Figures for this year show that police numbers are at the lowest levels in three decades. Since 2010 over 21,000 police officers have been lost in England and Wales, over 16,000 police staff and over 6,000 community support officers have been axed despite repeated promises to protect the frontline.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary warned in their annual assessment that some forces are so stretched “the lives of vulnerable people could be at risk”.
Police recorded violent crime is now at the highest on record; knife offences are at the highest level since records began; arrests have halved in a decade and unsolved crimes stand at 2m.
Mr Esterson added: “Hard-pressed local taxpayers will bear the burden for funding police forces. This will hit areas with a low council tax base hardest meaning that those areas which have lost the most through the cut in the central government grant will receive the least. This approach to funding by the Conservatives is dangerous and is reckless as well as being unfair.”
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