Andrew Dismore

Dear editor,

I read with disdain Conservative MP Theresa Villiers’s pathetic attempts to pull the wool over your readers’ eyes by trying to defend her Party’s atrocious police funding record by quoting dubious national figures out of context.

The facts are these.

The Conservative Government is enforcing £1billion of cuts to the Metropolitan Police since 2010, supported by Barnet’s three Conservative MPs, including Mrs Villiers. This has led to London losing 3,000 police officers, more than 3,000 PCSOs and 5,000 police staff, closure of police stations (including High Barnet and Golders Green) and mergers of Borough commands (Barnet is being merged with Harrow and Brent) to meet the ever greater financial pressures imposed by the Conservatives. It ill behoves MPs like Mrs Villiers to complain about the closure of High Barnet police station when it is a direct consequence of the very cuts in police funding required by successive Conservative Government budgets for which she voted.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Home Affairs Select Committee, Public Accounts Committee and even the Home Secretary have all admitted that the Met. won’t be able to tackle violent crime without more Government funding.

The Home Secretary’s  announcement  of £172 million ‘additional funding’ represents only a tiny fraction of the swingeing  Government cuts suffered by the Met. Police since 2010.

A large share of this funding is for additional pressures on police pensions which are  of the Government’s own making in the first place. More than half of the announced funds doesn’t come from the Government  in any case but is made up, yet again, of above inflation Council Tax increases, the Conservatives once more using smoke and mirrors to claim credit for something that is not theirs.

The breakdown is as follows:

• £45.7m for specific pensions funding (so not available to support police activity or numbers)
• £11.7m increase to the National and International Capital City grant (merely a partial reimbursement of money already spent on e.g. security at Parliament and for the Royal family, and a fraction of the total which  the Government  itself acknowledges is hugely  unfunded)
• £80m from more Council Tax, with power to increase the police share to £24 for a Band D property (i.e. additional taxes for Londoners, notpaid by Government)
• and finally, last and least,  a £33m increase in core grant funding from Government (a drop in the ocean compared with the £1 billion they have cut so far; and in any case  almost entirely swallowed up by the cost of £28.8m for the Met.’s  police officers’ well deserved pay increase this financial year).

The harsh reality is that the Government is continuing to shunt the cost of policing onto London’s council taxpayers, which it’s clear will not fill the massive financial black hole and will hit London’s poorest hardest, especially locally as heartless Conservative Barnet Council is cutting council tax relief for the poorest in the borough.

Moreover, the Government has failed to confirm police funding for future years, meaning the financial cliff edge remains. The consequence is that the number of police officers in London will continue to fall over the years ahead.

We’ve had months of warm words from the Home Secretary about the desperate need for more Government funding in order to tackle violent crime, now proved to be empty rhetoric. Mayor Sadiq Khan is right to call on the Government fully to reverse their £1bn of damaging cuts to the police the Conservatives have made since 2010.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Dismore

London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden