On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. At midnight tonight a new stealth tax comes into effect—the doubling of duty for millions of air passengers. That tax increase has not been approved by Parliament and is not covered by any resolution of Parliament; that is indeed without precedent, as has been confirmed by the Treasury Committee. This is nothing short of a constitutional outrage. Mr. Speaker, what can you do to protect the people of this country from taxation without representation?

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I shall not be drawn into that particular argument. Perhaps he could start putting down parliamentary questions—[Interruption.] Order. He could start by going to the Table Office right away.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law so as to require traffic authorities to cause traffic signs to be placed on or near roads for the purpose of indicating the location of historic county, town and village boundaries; to require the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to mark the boundaries of the historic counties, towns and villages on its maps; and for connected purposes.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) who presented a similar Bill and, indeed, inspired the one that I present today. I thank the Association of British Counties, a society dedicated to promoting awareness of the 86 historic counties of Great Britain, which has campaigned tirelessly for their recognition through proper signage denoting historic county boundaries.

My Bill extends the principle of giving visible recognition to historic counties by including towns and villages, whose identity is so often lost when a district, borough or county council ignores the correct name of actual places and instead chooses to impose the name of the administrative authority, causing confusion and removing the sense of local identity that is so important to communities up and down our land.

Restoring identity to counties, towns and villages, along with pride and local patriotism in an historical context, is immensely important. I believe that we must stop the erosion of true local identities and restore the pride that people naturally feel in belonging to a county, town or village that in so many cases has already been lost.

My town of Romford is probably one of the best examples. As an historic Essex market town, there are indications of our historical links with Essex all over Romford—together with the constituencies of Hornchurch and Upminster, which today form the administrative authority of the London borough of Havering. That is a typical construct of the local government reforms of the 1960s. As I travel back after a busy week at Westminster to my home town of Romford, which lies within my home county of Essex, I enter the boundaries of Essex and Romford, but nowhere do I see a road sign welcoming me to either place. They have been written off the map by a dreadful local government culture that seems to recognise only the often made-up and artificial names of administrative boroughs or districts. That cannot be allowed to continue.

I was born in a place called Rush Green, a community within Romford but divided by a nonsensical local government boundary that splits one side of the area from the other, leaving half of it in Havering and the other in Barking and Dagenham. Only recently new signs were erected to welcome people to the area. You have guessed it, Mr. Speaker, down came the signs that indicated that one was entering Rush Green. They were replaced by signs saying, “Welcome to Havering”. I am aware that hon. Members have many such examples of the traditional boundaries of their counties, towns and villages being ignored by blinkered town hall bureaucrats who seem interested in promoting only the name of their administrative authority, even if it is a totally artificial name with no historic meaning.

To see an Essex sign, which should correctly be placed at the River Lea near Stratford in east London, I have to travel many miles, through a host of traditional Essex towns and communities, until I reach the other side of motorway 25, where Essex county council has erected “Essex” signs as one enters Brentwood. I and many of my constituents, who are proud of our Essex heritage and roots, find that deeply offensive. County councils, London boroughs, elected mayors and transport authorities must never be allowed to strip people of their local identities. The law must be changed and that is what my Bill seeks to do.

The importance of historic villages, towns and counties is much greater than just local government. They are sources of identity and objects of affection for many people and I sincerely hope that this significant part of our British identity can be secured for future generations. However, to achieve that, we must mandate local authorities to install signage indicating actual counties, towns and villages and giving their names precedence over the name of the administrative council itself. We must divorce administrative, regional, electoral and ward boundaries from true places that have existed for hundreds of years. I have even seen one local council—a Labour one—erecting a sign that indicates the made-up name of an electoral ward, rather than the actual name of the community, which has existed for centuries. How damaging to our identity such actions can be.

I have lived all my life in the community of Marshalls Park, which is where I went to school. That lies within the town of Romford, situated in the county of Essex, which forms part of a country called England. My home, until a future local government review takes place, may lie within the so-called Pettits ward of the London borough of Havering, in the region of Greater London, but those are names with no meaning, designed for administrative and electoral purposes only. We should never allow them to override or replace the true identities and place names of Britain’s historic counties, towns and villages, but sadly that is what is happening.

Let us conserve our heritage so that future generations understand the distinct and rich identities of a Yorkshireman, a Middlesaxon, a Lancastrian, or, like myself, a proud Essex lad. Let us defend our heritage and the history of these islands. Let us especially defend our historic counties, each with their own character—whether they be Rutland, Flintshire, Perthshire, Antrim, Middlesex or Essex—that form the foundations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The aim of the Bill is to denote, through true, correct and proper signage, the boundaries of historical villages, towns and counties. Signs would contain the traditional crest of the village, town or county, and not the logo of the local authority, unless it was very small and placed at the bottom of the sign. Such a change in procedure would clearly distinguish the permanent historical patchwork of places that comprise our country from the artificial creations of Whitehall that come and go. The Bill would restore our heritage, inspire local patriotism, and uphold our proud local identities, and I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Andrew Rosindell, Mr. Simon Burns, Derek Conway, Mr. Lindsay Hoyle, Mr. Nigel Dodds, Mr. Mike Hancock, Mr. Mark Lancaster, Peter Luff, Mr. Greg Pope, Mr. John Randall, Bob Russell and Angela Watkinson.

Historic Counties, Towns and Villages (traffic Signs and Mapping)

Andrew Rosindell accordingly presented a Bill to amend the law so as to require traffic authorities to cause traffic signs to be placed on or near roads for the purpose of indicating the location of historic county, town and village boundaries; to require the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to mark the boundaries of the historic counties, towns and villages on its maps; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 29 June, and to be printed [Bill 55].

As a Middlesex MP, I beg to move,

That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2007-08, House of Commons Paper No. 207, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.

I am pleased to tell the House that we have delivered another reasonable funding settlement for the police service next year. It is important to say that that builds on considerable investment over a sustained period. Government grant and central spending on services for the police will have increased from £6.2 billion in 1997-98 to some £11 billion in 2007-08. That is a cash increase of nearly £4.8 billion, or 77 per cent.—almost 40 per cent. in real terms.

Let me put the increase in resources for the police service in a wider context. The Government have presided over the most intense programme of police reform for more than a century. We have not only provided significant extra resources for the service and increased personnel, but overseen performance management, a changing mix of roles in the work force and the implementation of neighbourhood policing. All those elements command support across the House.

The hon. Gentleman knows that there is considerable anxiety in several police authority areas—not least in my area of Avon and Somerset—about the change of policy on the provision of community support officers.

You were against them.

I spoke for my party when we considered the relevant Bill and we were very much for them.

I do not challenge the Minister’s decision, because I understand why it has been taken, but is there any possibility of deploying unused funds from elsewhere to support the recruitment of community support officers in areas that can recruit and want to meet the Government’s original targets?

If I may, I will come to CSOs in more detail later. I have said to the chair of Avon and Somerset police authority and others that if there is some slack, or an unwillingness to pick up the respective contributions for the 16,000 recruitment target that was set for April 2007, I will be more than happy to consider the redistribution of the extra CSOs.

The latest figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers show that 10,000-plus CSOs have been recruited, and the feedback from the forces is that they will all reach the 16,000 target or just exceed it by April 2007. To be fair, the change from 24,000 to 16,000 has concentrated minds. Before the announcement, many authorities questioned whether they could reach the 16,000 target by April even with an accelerated recruitment pattern, which is one reason why we looked at the issue. The catharsis that resulted from our shifting the target means that all the forces have focused on it and, on latest intelligence, are on schedule to meet it. However, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point—I want the target of 16,000 or so to be implemented, and I have told the chair of his police authority that, if give and take is required at the edges, we are prepared to look at that.

I accept that the Minister will come to police community support officers in a moment, but is he aware that Norfolk constabulary is trying very hard indeed to roll out the safer neighbourhoods partnership scheme, which has had a significant impact on reducing crime in Norfolk, particularly petty crime? That is critically dependent on the 280 PCSOs promised by the Department. The figure has been reduced, which means that either the scheme is at risk or Norfolk will have to increase the precept, thus risk capping. What advice can the Minister give Norfolk?

Earlier this week I met a delegation from Norfolk, and they made many of the points that the hon. Gentleman has just made. I am encouraged that he shares the Government policy agenda on neighbourhood policing, and accepts that it is successful. I do not dispute the fact that Norfolk has some challenging decisions to make about its budget. However, I am gratified that, as reported by the chair of the police authority, every district, county and other council in Norfolk supported the original target to implement—I think “implement” is preferable to “roll out”—neighbourhood policing, and I wish them well in doing so. We had a strong and fruitful discussion, and I said that I am more than happy to help in any way that I can by, for example, making representations across government and, if necessary, going to see what is already in place in Norfolk—

rose—

rose—

May I finish my sentence? I have, in fact, done so, so I shall give way to the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin).

I am grateful to the Minister for finishing his sentence quickly. Police authorities throughout the country want to know what their position will be in future years. There was a widespread welcome for the new funding formula introduced by the Government, but there are concerns that the floors remain in place. Can the Minister tell us today whether there are any plans to reduce the existing floors so that counties that thought that they would do better under the new formula may receive greater funding in due course?

That is a fair question, and I shall come on to deal with the issue in detail. I accept that under the formula, with its existing floors and ceilings, Derbyshire is a loser, rather than a gainer. However, as I told the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) when we debated policing in Greater Manchester in Westminster Hall, for every loser there are gainers. I cannot say today how long the taper on floors and ceilings will remain in place, but—

rose—

May I finish my paragraph—not just a sentence this time—as my answer may affect the questions that hon. Members wish to ask? Without wishing to be churlish, I urge the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire to talk to colleagues in Cheshire, Cleveland, Cumberland, Devon and Cornwall, Dorset, Durham and so on, which gained from the settlement. I know that there are frustrations; there is some disquiet, and a debate is needed on the whole issue of police funding. The Lyons report will ensure that the subject is debated, at least in part. The frustrations to which I refer relate to the question of when we will receive that report, and I share those frustrations. If, outwith this debate on the settlement, we can have a mature, reflective and grown-up debate on where we should go with police funding, that would be welcome; we would then not need to talk about floors and ceilings.

The problem in Derbyshire is that the change in the formula has been negated for two years running, and there has been no progress in getting it implemented. For example, a similar authority, West Mercia, should get £4 million less than Derbyshire, but gets £10 million more. When will progress be made on that general problem for Derbyshire? We have reasonable local government settlements, but overall the county is losing £22 million because of the floors. Other authorities that have done much better than us over the years keep bleating about their settlements, while taking money away from us.

With the best will in the world, I have to demur. We are talking about seeking to reduce the impact of changes in formula across the country. We want to consider the impact of the changes—which are all in the right direction, by the way; all the changes in resources are upward. We want to equalise the impact across the country, as a prelude to ensuring a more level playing field in police finance, as the right hon. Member for West Derbyshire suggests. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, it is not enough for any Member to talk about “bleating”, or to give any other such description of counties that benefit—at least for now—from the ceiling, rather than otherwise.

I ask people to resist the notion that there are winners and losers, although I know that I will hear plenty more comments to that effect in our debate from colleagues on both sides of the House. The overall context is one of significant interest in resourcing for policing, so that everyone is a winner. It is not appropriate language to talk about the “cumulative losses” of authorities that have been at the wrong end of the floors and ceilings.

I appreciate the Minister’s approach to the debate. Does he accept that although Surrey has an excellent police force, our grant per head is only £89, which I think is the lowest rate in the country? It is well below the average in the south-east. That is a very low grant for us, and we have had extra expenses in connection with the police merger talks, and as a result of hosting the EU Heads of State meeting. Surrey is under a great deal of pressure, and I hope that the Minister will sympathise and perhaps take that into account.

I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that I am known for my sympathy for Surrey, in all respects. International events are dealt with under the special grant route. On his specific point—again, this goes back to the need for a general debate about finance—history plays a strong role in the situation. I take his point about the figure being relatively low, on a per-head basis. However, in terms of precept, Surrey is at the other end of the scale. It has a significant precept, and is ranked higher than many of the 43 authorities in England and Wales, but it has a larger population among whom to spread it. In terms of actual resources, Surrey is not hard done by compared with other forces. It is not ill-served by either the formula or the precept increases. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, in the sense that it cannot be right—this is my point about the general police financing arrangement—for the precept per head to range from £88 to £210. Alongside that, the precept contribution as a percentage of overall police resources varies. It is 18 to 20 per cent. for some forces, but for Surrey, among others, the figure is way up in the high 30s, if not 40-plus per cent.

Fifty per cent.

I do not think that it is quite 50 per cent., actually.

It is 49.3 per cent.

Well, there we are; it is not quite 50 per cent. I said that. None the less, there should be a broadly similar service across the country. Of course there are specific needs, given factors such as deprivation, make-up and history, but those disparities are the sort of factors that will be addressed in the Lyons report and elsewhere. I half take the point made by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), but I do not accept it in the broader sense.

There is indeed a good story to tell, as there has been real-terms growth in police funding over recent years, but the formula needs attention, particularly in the east midlands. One of the flaws of the formula is that there is a lag between population growth and the rate at which grant rises. The per capita increases for the rapidly growing population in the east midlands, where the population growth rate is almost twice that of the rest of England, create problems as the years go by. The best example—or worst, depending on one’s point of view—is Lincolnshire, which is growing at a rate of 10 per cent. over 10 years. The population growth rate for England as a whole is less than 2.5 per cent. Will the lags in the system be addressed, so that the formula is more effective in the five east midlands forces, including Leicestershire?

Like other Departments, we seek to address those issues, but I take my hon. Friend’s point about the rapidity of some changes and the population increases in many areas, and not just the east midlands. The formula, or formulae, and other elements are perhaps not sufficiently able to keep pace with those increases. I have had discussions about the “growth areas” with colleagues in other Departments, including the Department for Communities and Local Government—I think that it calls itself CLG now; I do not know what happened to the D—to ensure that the police and security dimensions are considered in the early stages of any planned growth in an area. I take my hon. Friend’s point, including on the wider issue that I thought he was addressing, which was basically that there were flaws in the floors.

Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend to move away from arguments on distribution. Ipswich witnessed exceptional events before Christmas, but the police grant will not meet the full costs, so will the Minister say anything about how he can help Suffolk police authority with the additional and exceptional costs that have arisen? I do not refer just to next year’s settlement, but to the costs that it will have to meet before the end of this financial year.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has had the chance to intervene, because there are very specific circumstances relating to Suffolk, and particularly Ipswich, given the events that took place in the run-up to Christmas. Rather erroneously, one of the leading 24-hour news channels suggested yesterday—I do not know why—that we were somehow letting Suffolk down, and that it would carry a huge deficit because of those special circumstances, so it is useful to have a chance to explain the situation in more detail. The routine is that when exceptional events take place, whether they be the international events that took place in Surrey, or the murder inquiries in Suffolk before Christmas, constabularies apply to the Department for a special grant, outside of the settlement that we are talking about today. The claim is duly assessed by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary in a routine fashion, and then passed to Ministers to make a decision. In the case of this financial year—

rose—

I have a whole answer to get through, rather than just a paragraph or a sentence, before I give way. I understand that there are significant local dimensions to the debate, and I will seek to take all interventions. I will then get back to my 20-minute speech, but not deliver the whole 20 minutes of it, if hon. Members follow what I am saying.

Suffolk has applied for some £9 million in special grant to deal with all its activities thus far. HMIC has determined that much of that claim is entirely reasonable, but this is only the first half of an extended special grant process, because pre-trial preparation and further investigations will carry on well into subsequent financial years. HMIC recommends to me that it is more than appropriate that the authority itself should cover about £1 million of the £9 million. These are examples, because the issues involved go far above and beyond those that we need to address, but at least some of the cost can be taken on board by the Suffolk police authority. It is suggested that we should pay £8 million, and I am convinced that that is absolutely right. We will tell Suffolk that we will provide £8 million of that £9 million request for this year.

As I said to colleagues from Ipswich and Suffolk when I met the murder inquiry teams and the chief constable—on, I think, 4 January—we will be very sympathetic, given the unusual circumstances faced by that relatively small force, and when the application is made for the second half of that special grant next year, we will treat the request in a similar, or better, way. I congratulate Suffolk constabulary on all it did over Christmas and beyond. It was an enormous task for such a small force. I thank all other forces for getting involved as readily as they did—it was a genuine exercise in working together. I assure the Suffolk force that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who was mentioned yesterday in this regard, and I have taken seriously and sympathetically its request for extra payment.

I recognise the risk of the debate becoming a surgery for individual complaints and problems, so I shall try to give my point a wider dimension. The Minister is aware that the Dyfed-Powys police authority argues that its police inflation costs exceed the inflation increases offered through the settlement. Is he willing to consider an environment where the Minister and the Department discuss at a macro level with the police forces how the funding settlements are reached? The police forces are not trying to rip anyone off. They just want their concerns to be taken on board in the formula. Perhaps that would resolve at a strategic level the kind of tactical issues that I would raise about Dyfed-Powys police and which many colleagues raise about their police forces.

Again, that is an entirely fair point and should form part of the broader debate that we need to have on all aspects of police finance, in the context of the huge growth that there has been in resources, and recognising that police forces have been using those resources efficiently and productively and want to grow beyond that. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s broad point and do not apologise to any Member for raising specific points about policing in a police settlement debate.

Does my hon. Friend agree that although we can celebrate the fact that Thames Valley police has a record number of officers—some 4,280, thanks to increased investment from the Government—the benefits are somewhat diminished by the attempts of neighbouring forces, including the Met, to poach fully trained officers from places like Reading and Slough? Is it not time that we considered transfer payments to compensate areas that are losing out for the costs of training and recruitment?

As a Middlesex MP, a London MP and probably a beneficiary of such a perverse relationship, if indeed such a perverse relationship exists, I should say that that is a fair point, which should be considered in a wider debate about police finance in more general terms.

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I am coming to Buckingham.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. His charm and courtesy leave my noble Friend Lord Tebbit in the shade. I identify with the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter), who is entirely right. Given that the Thames Valley police force has been able to balance its budget only by a £7 million cut in support costs, which is necessarily one-off and cannot be repeated next year, and that in 2008-09 the increase in revenue support grant still leaves a £15 million shortfall on required budget, how does the hon. Gentleman expect that Sara Thornton and her colleagues will cope in the face of a projected and substantial increase in the population of the region?

I was about to be hugely insulted when the hon. Gentleman started, but I was quite complimented by the time he got to the end of his opening remarks. I pay tribute to Thames Valley police and chief constable Sara Thornton for all that they have done. I have been up there two or three times in the wake of Project Overt, not least to go wandering through the woods around Wycombe to speak to young coppers who were there all the way up to 22 December, long after August and Project Overt. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the growing level of resources which, as I said, forces are using productively and efficiently, and they are still making efficiency gains and still seeking to grow. Whatever difficulties forces have in reaching their target with this year’s settlement, next year will present a more significant challenge for them to match their ambitions with the resource envelope.

That means that, on the basis of cross-party consensus, the sooner we have a substantive and hopefully non-partisan debate on the wider aspects of police finance, the better. With 67 per cent. increases and forces wanting to do far more than they have done, not least the Thames Valley force, which is hugely creative and imaginative in all that it does, I do not want to restrain them by flat-lining resources, even after huge increases. The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely fair point.

I should put on record again my enormous gratitude to Thames Valley for all that it did in Project Overt, not just in Wycombe, but beyond. With the agreement of the local treasury, we have hopefully sorted out the contribution from the centre towards the force’s resources spent on Project Overt.

May I take the hon. Gentleman’s helpful and conciliatory answer to mean that if the hon. Member for Reading, West and I get together, formulate a powerful case, arrange a meeting with him and advance it in our usual mellifluous and responsible terms, his answer will be yes?

I am happy for the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) to get together, as he calls it.

My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) mentioned the influence of population on funding. May I ask the Minister respectfully to consider coastal areas where there are caravan parks where people live—they should not, but they do—for 12 months of the year? In my county, Denbighshire, it is estimated that there are 700 people living in caravan parks. Across the whole of north Wales, there are many thousands. Will my hon. Friend look into the matter and ensure that people living in caravan parks are recognised for the purposes of the police funding formula, and that sufficient funding is put in place?

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, which the formula seeks to address in the general sense of population. If we move to even greater complexity, rather like the local government report that we will discuss later, I am not sure how profitable that would be for policing, but the formula should be a mix that captures what is required in the national sense and is flexible enough to reflect local peculiarities of population, growth levels and other elements more readily than it does at present. It is a reasonable point, which I will consider.

I thank the Minister for the generous amount of time that he is giving to Back Benchers. May I ask him to look again at the settlement for north Wales? I know that we are all bidding for our own areas. He will recall in September, on an uncharacteristically wet day in St. Asaph, opening the new communications centre, which he said was cutting-edge technology, probably leading forces throughout England and Wales. In that spirit, is he prepared to meet a small delegation from the police authority and myself in order to discuss specific issues and, more broadly, rural policing and the financing thereof?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of St. Asaph. It was extremely interesting. Naturally, to kick off events in the marquee in the car park, with chandeliers and all that sort of thing, those present sang the national anthem in Welsh. I made sure that I did not, having learned from the experience of previous English occupants of significant positions.

If there is, as I believe there is, within the broad discussion, a need to focus on the specifics of Wales or the specifics of rural policing in the Principality or more generally, I will have that discussion, with respect, with a wider group than the hon. Gentleman suggests. I have seen the four Welsh authorities together and separately a number of times since taking over my present post in July. I have had discussions with a range of colleagues, particularly Labour MPs from north Wales, and there is still to come an outstanding meeting—not an outstanding MP—with a Tory colleague from north Wales. I am happy to have those meetings, but to deal adequately with the finance base in Wales and elsewhere, and with rural policing and the other points that the hon. Gentleman makes, we need a much wider debate than a series of meetings with individual MPs. I am happy to have such meetings, in a wider context.

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I will go to Essex.

The Minister will know that the Essex police force provided support to the Suffolk constabulary during its recent major inquiry. Given that he is seeking to encourage voluntary working together between forces on issues such as the vital fight against terrorism, may I remind him that the Essex police force has considerable experience in those fields because of the special facilities at Stansted and the assistance that it gave to the Met on 7/7? Will he bear that in mind when the protocols are being negotiated?

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I shall not, but I hope that Essex and the other police forces with which it draws up those agreements and protocols will do so. I would say generally to the House that whatever people’s perspective on the strategic forces merger debate in the summer, I am impressed and heartened by the significant progress made throughout the country in talking to each other in practical terms about shared operations on a local basis, between forces or more regionally. We have heard about the east midlands region, where a lot of work is going on across the five forces in that regard. That is almost the reverse of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West. The proximity of Essex, Kent and some of the other home counties forces to the Metropolitan police means that there is a lot of positive operational two-way traffic and subsequent experience in relation not only to terrorism but to other serious matters that are more common in London and the home counties than elsewhere. I will certainly bear that in mind.

I am sure that the Minister is aware that many people in west Yorkshire wonder why we have a needs-based funding formula if it is not actually going to be implemented. I understand that West Yorkshire police has been underfunded to the tune of £15 million against the needs-based funding formula. Can the Minister confirm the level of underfunding for this year?

Let me make a practical suggestion as to how police budgets can be improved. Forces should be allowed to recover the full cost of policing events. For example, people who pay for expensive tickets for football matches and concerts at Roundhay park in Leeds effectively get free policing outside the event which is paid for by local council taxpayers and residents, who are also missing out on policing. Can the Minister—

Order. I think that that is sufficient for the time being.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s second point, but not his point about underfunding. While we might still be in a transitional phase in terms of fully implementing the new funding and therefore still have floors and ceilings, I would say as sharply as I can that he should go and talk to his hon. Friends in North Yorkshire, which is not a million miles away from his area, and ask them when they want to lose the positive contribution that they get from floors and ceilings. Then he could pop over to Cumbria and speak to his colleagues there: he still has some, including an ex-Home Office Minister. As regards football, if I was being facetious—which as a West Ham supporter I am not really entitled to be—I should not think that there are many crowds around Elland road or in Bradford at the moment.

The Minister has talked about population changes. In popular tourist resorts such as my constituency, the population doubles for three to eight months of the year, but that is not taken into account in the current formula, although the growth is year on year. The police have made that case to me, so will he seriously consider it?

I take my hon. Friend’s point in the same spirit as I have taken those from other Members. This extends to a broader debate about finance. I am sure that he is very happy about the growth in tourism on Anglesey, but that tourism is not new. Of course it has grown, and perhaps grown increasingly, but it did not drop out of the sky all of a sudden. It is not something extraordinary, as in some other cases.

I forgot to say to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that there are still a few London MPs, whether in Middlesex or Essex, who sit for the Conservatives. London benefits to the tune of some 33 per cent. through ceilings and floors, so perhaps he might like to talk to his colleagues there when he talks to those in North Yorkshire and Cumbria.

Bournemouth police are very concerned about the fact that tourism is not included in the formula, as is made clear on page 13 of the police grant document. The number of bars is taken into consideration, but not their size. We have 30,000 visitors on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. Elements nightclub has 3,000 visitors, compared with the Holyhead pub in Moordown, which has 30. That means that half the police on duty in Bournemouth are looking after a quarter of a square mile and denying the rest of Bournemouth the proper policing that it needs. Bournemouth police are overstretched, and because of the formula they will lose out year after year. I ask the Minister to consider that.

Bournemouth benefits from the floors and ceilings system rather than losing from it, so I do not know what the hon. Gentleman’s point is in that regard. I take the broader point that tourism and the night-time economy feature increasingly in the activities of many forces throughout the country. If they are not reflected sufficiently in the formula, then let us have a wider debate about police finance. These dimensions are increasingly reflected in the wider local government formula. Many of the comments that hon. Members are making about policing go to wider public service issues that are not specifically the domain of the police authority. We could have a significant debate, I hope on a non-partisan basis, about what we want from our police, what the resource base should be, what the mix between local and national contributions should be, what are—not only for London but elsewhere—discernibly national or regional issues that should be dealt with at that level rather than through local policing, and what the relationship should be between local neighbourhood policing, response policing and some of the wider strategic county-wide or region-wide issues, which is something that every force struggles with constantly.

The fact that I am the third MP from Derbyshire to intervene probably indicates the strength of feeling about the issue there. As regards the Minister’s comments about winners and losers under the floors and ceilings system, it is extraordinary that the losers should have to just bite their lips and get on with it. The Government introduced a new formula in 2006-07 precisely to address the fact that counties such as Derbyshire were historically underfunded over a long period. Under that new formula, the Government have said that Derbyshire should get another £5.7 million a year or so more, but with the next breath they are saying that we cannot have it. That is an extraordinary state of affairs. Derbyshire is currently funding the gap out of the reserves, but it cannot do that for much longer without having to slash policing in the county.

I am grateful to most Members for having made non-emotive and grown-up contributions. Talking about slashing this and slashing that is not helpful, nor is it true. Neither Derbyshire nor anywhere else will be slashing its way back to pre-1997 levels, and the hon. Gentleman should be careful about what he says. I give him the same exhortation that I gave to the hon. Member for Shipley—he needs to go and talk to his hon. Friend over in Cumbria, who benefits significantly from this. We are not saying, “We’ve got a new formula and we’re putting floors and ceilings in, so if you lose from it, go hang.” We are saying that we need, in all equity, to get to a stage where we can fully implement the new formula, but not in one hit; otherwise, this would be a substantially different debate. Funnily enough, there are few Liberals down in Devon and Cornwall, which also benefits significantly from the floors and ceilings aspect of the formula. I think that there is also the odd one—I mean numerically rather than in terms of the individual—in Norfolk, a very odd one in Sussex, and one in West Mercia too.

There must be some degree of national equity and some recognition that we need to buttress the full impact of any new formula. The “Little Derbyshire” approach taken by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), which is not shared by my hon. Friends who are more substantial Derbyshire MPs, is not good enough. People need to make the strongest arguments in the strongest terms with that wider police backdrop instead of talking about silly little issues for “Focus”.

The Minister mentioned Norfolk in response to a relevant point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham). The Minister said that he was open minded, but does he accept that Norfolk has one of the lowest ratios of police officers to population and that under current proposals we will have 90 fewer police community support officers than promised? That reduced number is totally intolerable to local people.

Yes, but every single PCSO in Norfolk would not be there without the investment, resources and policy of the Government. I had a very constructive meeting with—I think, to be fair—the Conservative leader of the county council, a range of his officers and others, and we had a very interesting debate about exciting plans to take Norfolk forward. I wish him well in that regard and the plan has the full support of district councils, the county council and everybody else. They need to make the judgment—I cannot make it for them—in terms of where they set their precept and what they do with their budget, but they did express some very interesting plans to me.

I apologise to the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser), as I was flicking open the Dorset page and had forgotten momentarily—I do not say this in any nasty way—that he had shifted seats, so I am glad that he said Norfolk; otherwise, I would have quoted liberally about Dorset.

That is good, then.

Perhaps I should have been nastier, in that case.

To return to my speech—I will respond to individuals’ substantial contributions later if there is time—I hope hon. Members will indulge me if I do not dwell on the 20 pages left as a result of my taking so many interventions. I will just make some broad points.

I take seriously what hon. Members have said about damping the formula. Having looked, lived and breathed the figures for so long, I say in all sincerity that there is a need for a substantive debate on where we are going with the local element of police finance and the huge disparity between authorities. I do not say that in any way to cast doubt on how we have got to where we have. As I said to some hon. Members, history is largely responsible for it, but it cannot be right to have such a huge spread between the level of the precept and how much it contributes to the overall budget in what should be, taking account of variations in local circumstances, a national service delivered regionally and locally through constabularies. There will be issues around that.

I made a sedentary intervention earlier and the Minister noted that Surrey is virtually at 50 per cent. and will soon go through 50 per cent. of the precept. The problem for the people of Surrey is whether that means that, when it goes through the 50 per cent., the rules for Surrey police should be set by local residents rather than by the Government.

The balance between the two is partly what I have been referring to. I think I mean that in the context of the outliers on both ends of the scale. It is even more complex in the sense that those with lower precepts are not necessarily those that have the lower contributions from a local level to overall police budget. It is not as simplistic and linear as that. When I talk about collectively having a look at the finance base and the local contribution, I do not necessarily mean that everyone should gather up to the Surrey level in terms of a contribution, although I know the precept is high. Nor do I mean that everyone should be down at the Durham and Northumbria ends, where we are talking literally of £88 for a precept in one case and just more than £100 and some contributions of 18 and 20 per cent. in others.

There must be a way of collectively having a debate that is not about the national contribution or the level of funding from the centre, but perhaps more about round the edges. Increasingly, what are national policing issues—above and beyond things like counter-terrorism, which should be funded from the centre—need to be balanced by an argument about what the local contribution should be. I understand the point. It is specific at that end—in part, the Met, though it has a large population base, and Surrey and Sussex and one or two others—and at the other end historically are some other parts of the Met and some of the northern authorities.

When we get to a situation where there has been significant investment over 10 years and where it is flatlining or becoming less in terms of growth—growth is still way above inflation—and there are these tight and serious decisions to be made on a force by force basis, the flexibility around the local contribution is a serious element of the equation.

Significant representations have been made about the settlement. I think that we received some 40 written representations, covering some 26 police authorities, including letters from the Association of Police Authorities, chief constables, police authorities and MPs. Representations were made—interestingly, I think—chiefly in nine areas. They are the original level of the settlement, capping and council tax policy, continued use of a funding floor, police grant for the next three years—in terms of the comprehensive spending review for 2008-09 to 2010-11—capital provision for restructuring, neighbourhood policing, funding flexibilities, police efficiency and specific grants. Broadly, those issues were covered by hon. Members in today’s debate.

I understand that the Minister received representations from members of the Dyfed-Powys police authority, who were accompanied by a Minister from the Wales Office. The main issues were community support officers and how Dyfed-Powys producing its budget more prudently had worked against it. The Minister wanted to allow the authority to work towards having more community support officers, but not as many as it hoped to secure. Will the Minister comment on that?

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right that the meeting with the police authority and some MPs from Dyfed-Powys was focused on those issues. Given the accelerated targets for PCSOs by April 2007—ably assisted and funded by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to the tune of £90 million—Dyfed-Powys was one of the authorities that said that it would rather sit out from the target and then try and pick it up again subsequently. The authority was effectively penalised, through not fault of its own, so I promised that I would look again and see whether more funding could be found to get back on target—not just for Dyfed-Powys, but for Gwent and Cleveland. To be fair, we had squeezed the pot dry—if pots can be squeezed—to the extent that although I was pleased to find some moneys, I do not think that Dyfed-Powys should hold out much hope for further moneys from the centre as part of the exercise. I was pleased to find at least some.

The Minister went through the various representations that he had received. Earlier in his comments, he said that he did not want to restrain the police authorities by flatlining them. He has made it clear that one of the main concerns of police authorities is that, over the remainder of the comprehensive spending review, it looks as though there will be flatlining. I do not understand how the Minister can reconcile his earlier comments about not wanting to restrain police authorities by flatlining them with the fact that over the next two or three years of the comprehensive spending review, they are going to be flatlined.

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, that argument works only if police authorities are rather like a child and being spoon fed. If the resource base becomes static after 10 years of growth, there are ways in which police authorities and constabularies can look at everything they do to gain further efficiencies beyond what they do now.

The debate—in part, the wider financial debate—about contributions from the local level is one that I hope we can have. We need to see what the balance is and what it should be. It involves the notion of capping and the notion of the relationship between the local precept and the council tax. It involves the contribution from the centre and what it should be in all equity from local areas. There is much to be debated about that.

I take the point that we are achieving sustained, but far lower, growth over the comprehensive spending review periods than we have thus far. One of the advantages of two-year—and, hopefully, eventually three-year—settlements is that they can begin to be planned for. I do not accept the notion, which belies experience as well, that throughout those eight or 10 years of sustained and relatively high growth, all that police constabularies have done is put the money in their pocket and just carry on as they normally do. There have already been enormous efficiency gains across police authorities. Significant examination of how police authorities and constabularies do what they do has also taken place. To be fair, the picture today, 10 years on from 1997, of what they do and how they do it is enormously different. That must continue because things are ever changing.

To put it simply, the terrorism threat is enormous today compared with 1997. All forces work alongside local councils far more readily than they did 10 years ago on, for example, antisocial behaviour and community safety. There is now a genuine multi-agency approach, to use the lingo. The balance and mix throughout the country of police officers, police staff, other specialists and analysts is rightly different from the position 10 years ago. That should continue.

In short, police authorities and constabularies need to do significantly more in a different way with the high but fixed growth rate of resources. It is a case of much more than, “Daddy, stop giving us money, we can’t do things.” I appreciate that that is a generalisation of the comments of the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry); it is a form of short hand.

I shall now conclude my speech because I have been on my feet for 50 minutes or so, although about 30 minutes were taken up with interventions. I am grateful for interventions and happy to take them, but we need to move on. I also appreciate that there is a time limit on some hon. Members’ speeches.

The comprehensive spending review years and the multi-year settlement provide challenges, with which forces will start to wrestle as they settle their budgets this week. There has been a good efficiency record and I expect it to continue. I believe that the police authorities and constabularies want it to continue because the efficiencies that they make release funds to spend elsewhere rather than being clawed back to the centre.

There is a good news story about what police authorities have to do and where their priorities lie. We have listened carefully to all stakeholders in determining the detail of the settlement, which is a good one. Our proposals will ensure that all police authorities in England and Wales receive a fair share of resources next year. We have added to that some funding flexibility so that forces get the work force mixes right locally, balance their budgets and continue to improve the service.

I am sorry that I have taken slightly longer than I anticipated but I appreciate the local dimensions to the debate and I wanted to take as many interventions as possible. I commend the police grant report to the House.

I thank the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety for setting out the grant settlement for this year, but I fear that what he said left many questions unanswered.

It is clear that the police fear that the 3.6 per cent. increase in their budget this year means that money is already tight. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities estimate that the police service needs an annual 5 per cent. increase in its budget simply to stand still. The president of ACPO said:

“To maintain … high standards, the Government must maintain sufficient levels of funding. Demands on the police service mean that although the 3.6 per cent. settlement for the service remains above inflation, our expenditure increases at a far greater rate, a fact that must be reflected in our financial allocations. The Government has planned an ambitious programme for police development in the years ahead, but this settlement is not a springboard for it.”

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so soon in his response. As a fellow Sussex Member, he knows that Sussex police have been asked to do more and more. The settlement will make it much harder for them to deliver the target of 525 police community support officers, for which they budgeted under earlier Government commitments. The current plan will leave them with 171 fewer PCSOs. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in his constituency and mine, that represents a genuine disappointment for people who appreciate PCSOs and know that they do a valuable job, especially on low-level vandalism and antisocial behaviour?

I agree. The consequence of the so-called flexibility that the Minister mentioned is the withdrawal of the promise of 171 PCSOs in Sussex, or 8,000 nationally—4,000 in the so-called respect areas that the Government announced only a week ago. Chief constables throughout the country were busy making promises to communities about the additional policing that they believed that they could provide. They will now be unable to do that.

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the cut in the target for PCSOs. In Gloucestershire, that translates into 74 PCSOs that we were expecting and needed, but will not now get.

An additional problem is that the one-off funding that is being provided in lieu of the permanent final tranche is heavily skewed towards London and the Metropolitan Police Authority. In Gloucestershire, that means only £167,000 in one-off funding instead of the £1 million in permanent funding that we expected. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on that?

I agree. The Metropolitan Police Authority received the lion’s share of the remaining funding, although the Government withdrew £70 million. The Met received approximately two thirds of what remained, leaving the provincial forces even shorter of resources. That means that they cannot provide the promised number of PCSOs.

As ACPO’s head of finance pointed out, the settlement is not all that it seems. A range of specific grants, for example, for forensics, supports the general grant. In most cases, they have been frozen. Consequently, as ACPO’s head of finance, Dr. Tim Brain, who is also chief constable of Gloucestershire, said, the overall value of the general grant to forces and authorities has been substantially reduced. That will put further pressure on force budgets.

In my force in Sussex, the special formula grants for rural policing, forensic testing, special priority payments and south-east allowances will remain unchanged and frozen at last year’s levels. That amounts to a cut of 2.8 per cent. in real terms and will cause the force and the authority problems.

The hon. Gentleman has been told that police inflation is some 5 per cent. However, a significant part of police expenditure is on pay. The settlement this year was 3 per cent. and the formula was 3.6 per cent. How does he calculate 5 per cent. inflation for the total budget? I am interested in his reply.

The hon. Gentleman is right: more than 80 per cent. of a police force’s budget is spent on pay. Pay increases generally outstrip the rate of inflation because the pay settlement is index linked. Other costs increase as the police’s mission widens. Consequently, as the Minister pointed out, forces have to make efficiency savings year after year.

The genuine question is not about this year, when forces are already beginning to face difficulties, but about future years under the comprehensive spending review. The Minister alluded to that, but we need to examine the matter. From next year, which is the first year of the comprehensive spending review settlement, the Home Office budget will be frozen in real terms, and the police have been told to expect an increase of no more than 2.7 per cent. It could be less than that. Consequently, police budgets from next year onwards will be frozen in real terms.

The Association of Police Authorities and ACPO estimate that, by 2010-11—the third year of the proposed settlement—the police could face a funding gap of as much as £966 million. To put that in context, the police’s annual national budget is £10 billion, so we are considering a potential funding gap, as set out by the APA and ACPO, of 10 per cent. of the national policing budget. That will pose very serious challenges for the police. In a document called “Sustainable Policing”, the associations point out that the risk posed by under-resourcing is not that policing will suddenly collapse, but that with the contraction of capability the services provided to communities will erode, and particular functions will either be withdrawn entirely or unable to perform to acceptable levels.

Concerns are already being expressed up and down the country about the funding that police forces might have in future. The Police Federation has gone so far as to claim that 999 calls could take longer to answer, and that the number of fully trained officers will be reduced. I will refer to that in moment. The Hampshire force is already looking to make a 10 per cent. cut in services in the next financial year, according to the local police federation, and if there is no significant increase in funding, which there will not be, its police authority predicts that it will have to make a cut of 20 per cent. the following year. Durham constabulary is axing 100 police officer jobs and in the next financial year plans cuts of £3 million. Surrey has described its budget for the forthcoming year as insufficient. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) has said, Sussex is predicting a budget deficit of £6 million and cutbacks. North Yorkshire police considers the situation sufficiently dire that the police authority predicts that even a 5 per cent. increase—which it will not get—would leave a £3 million deficit next year. West Mercia predicts a £1 million gap in funding, with further more acute financial concerns over the next three years.

My hon. Friend has outlined several areas, including my county of Hampshire, that are experiencing great difficulty in delivering services, and yet we continually hear from the Government about policies such as increasing visible policing, which are not matched by the budgets to ensure delivery. The people who are left to pick up the pieces and deal with disgruntled residents, however, are the police, not Ministers.

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Hampshire and other police authorities up and down the country will face a loss of promised police community support officers—there will be 206 fewer—which will affect her constituency of Basingstoke and others. The chairman of the police authority finance committee has expressed concern about that. It is a pity that in an area where, for instance, the non-emergency 101 number was piloted and customer satisfaction has increased as a consequence, the other side of the equation is a reduction in the front-line policing promised by the Government, diminishing the service available to the public.

Is not there another dimension that has not yet been raised in the debate? Given the overall chaos in the Home Office in relation to prisoner numbers and the need for new prison building, is not the danger that the police part of the Home Office budget will be squeezed even more than is projected?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why the police have expressed fear that although the indicated 2.7 per cent. annual increases would be at or around the level of inflation, they could be less than that. We should therefore question whether it was sensible for the Chancellor to take the Home Office out of the comprehensive spending review at such an early stage and to freeze its budget. That prompts questions about how seriously the Government are taking the security and policing challenges to which the Minister alluded. As my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has made clear, there is a case for putting the Home Office back within the comprehensive spending review to allow a proper assessment of the challenges facing the country, rather than assessing the priorities of other Departments but making a presumption that the Home Office budget is frozen, which does not seem to make sense.

Would the hon. Gentleman put those so-called cuts in historical perspective? Is it true that the previous Conservative Government cut the number of police officers by 1,000? Was that cut the result of rising, static or falling policing expenditure? In contrast, in the past 10 years under Labour, an extra 14,000 officers have been provided.

No, it is not true that there was a cut in police officers. There was a rise in the number of police officers under the previous Conservative Governments. We are debating whether policing will be sustainably financed going forward. Yes, there has been an increase in police officer and community support officer numbers. We are now seeing that increase not only starting to fall off but numbers being cut. That does not seem to be sustainable or to make sense.

The Government have reneged on promises made as recently as the last general election in relation to police community support officers. There is a serious question that needs to be addressed not just by the Minister but by the Government as a whole, as the Chancellor has effectively made those decisions. Whether that has been a consequence of him playing political games with successive Home Secretaries, or of an error of judgment in freezing the Home Office budget, it does not seem sensible to exclude the Home Office from the comprehensive spending review.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman in the middle of his mildly pathetic political rant. I hope that he will get back to the issue of policing. How can he describe an increase in the neighbourhood policing fund next year of 41 per cent. as a cut? Will he please not seek, however erroneously, to mislead the House?

Order. We are careful about the words that we use in debates. Would the hon. Gentleman care to rephrase his last remarks?

I thought that my use of the word “erroneous” covered that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If it did not, I withdraw the remark.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the neighbourhood policing fund will increase by 41 per cent. next year, and that the “cuts” that he talks about ought to be considered in that context?

The Minister knows perfectly well that I was talking about cuts in promised police community support officers, and there has indeed been a cut in the neighbourhood policing fund, to which I will refer in a moment.

Let us be clear about who has provided the additional resources for extra police officers. In 1996-97, almost 85 per cent. of police forces’ gross revenue expenditure was financed through Government. In 2006-07, the latest year for which figures are available, the proportion is expected to fall to 60 per cent. The amount of police spending financed through council tax has therefore doubled in real terms between 2001 and 2006-07. Council tax now accounts for more than 21 per cent. of police force expenditure finance, compared with 12 per cent. in 2001-02. The Government and Labour Members like to claim that they have recruited additional police officers. They have not recruited additional police officers; council tax payers up and down the country have done so.

I support what the hon. Gentleman says. In the past two years, our previous chief constable went around the whole of Devon and Cornwall imploring people to support an increase in council tax for additional officers and so on. The people responded that that was what they wanted to do. They have given the money, but they have seen all the advances taken away. Some of them are now saying, “We want our money back.”